


In Another Life

by CopperCaravan



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Inquisition, Dragon Age: Origins, Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
Genre: Action/Adventure, Assortment of NPCs, Canon-Typical Violence, F/M, Fenera Mahariel, Gen, Multi, Other Additional Tags to Be Added
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-12-30
Updated: 2016-02-21
Packaged: 2018-05-09 09:48:17
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 28,884
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5535335
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CopperCaravan/pseuds/CopperCaravan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>During the rise of the Inquisition, "dismissed" Warden Commander Mahariel finds herself in Tamriel with no clue how she got there, how to get back, or even what it is she's trying so desperately to get back to.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Riverwood

**Author's Note:**

> I've been wanting to write this crossover for a while, and I finally just decided to sit down and do it. So here it is, in all its kind-of-pointless glory. Includes a teeny-tiny bit of in-game dialogue and some quest write-ups, but mostly, it's the moments in between and lots of divergence. Appropriate tags will be added with each new chapter posted.   
> Things to note: my Mahariel can be quite... vulgar, so expect plenty of indelicate language; she is also polyamorous, which will eventually come into play although she's not nearly as good at "defining" her relationships as she should be; some of the DA crew will appear in flashbacks; this is the same Mahariel I've written my other DA stuff about, if you're interested in her as a character; and, lastly, I'm absolute crap at regular updates (evidenced by my other still-unfinished chaptered works) but I'm going to do my best.  
> Hope it's a good read! Please let me know what you think.

Mahariel lived in the sway of aravels on bumpy paths: she knows well the creak of wood and the smell of rosen and tanned leather and pine. It isn’t those things that wake her from the strange, heavy dream she’s having—something about ghosts, about witches and dragons and stone falling around her. She can’t quite remember it when she opens her eyes, spurred by the mumbling voices of men and the sharp sting of too-tight rope binding her wrists behind her.

“Rorikstead,” mutters the man across from her, answering a question she hadn’t heard. “I’m from Rorikstead.”

She doesn’t know that name, that place. _Rorikstead._ It rings hollow, doesn’t echo within her like _Ferelden_.

 _Ferelden?_ The name comes to her unbidden; she hadn’t known it, hadn’t thought to miss it, until it was there, reminding her. Yes, Ferelden. She remembers Ferelden. A little. She looks around at the passing land, takes in the trees and cold air. Ferelden. It certainly looks that way—mud and patches of snow and woodlands, but it smells all wrong. But she wasn’t in Ferelden, was she? No...

The wagon hits a hole in the road and they’re all jostled, her bum landing painfully back on the wooden seat. She looks away from the landscape, down at her waist, her thighs, her legs—everything seems a bit too thin. Where’s her meat? Her hard-earned muscle? The negligible layer of fat she’s almost been too busy to be self-conscious about along her tummy and butt and thighs?

But she can’t remember why she’s so thin, or perhaps she can’t remember why she thinks she ought not to be. More than that, her body feels strange. Empty. Wrong somehow. She can’t place it.

“What’s going on?” She asks the question carefully, only all too aware of her precarious position: bound and unarmed, in a cart and surrounded by shem men, accused and accusers alike.

“Ah, you’re awake,” answers one of her fellow prisoners—not the one from Rorikstead and not the one, she now notices, who has his mouth bound shut. “Ambushed near the border. Imperial bastards. Suppose you just got caught up in it like our friendly horse-thief here.”

“Imperials?” It doesn’t come out as a question, although she’s got no idea what the man is talking about. _Imperial._ She knows that word. Her mind supplies more: _The Imperial Highway. Tevinter. The Magisterium._ But she doesn’t know what any of those words mean.

“Aye,” is all he says, as though that explains everything. Perhaps it should.

A shadow falls over her as the wagon is drawn through an arched gate, not-quite-familiar stone walls corralling her in with jeers and shouts of treason. When they lurch to a halt, she’s hesitant to move, eyes locked on the chopping block nearby. This sensation—certain death—it feels far more familiar than anything else does. Her hesitance quickly gives way to anger when a soldier grabs her arm and shoves her off the cart, almost pushing her face-first into the soggy dirt.

She could run. The horse-thief from Rorikstead runs. She’s about to follow when he collapses, falling awkwardly over the backs of his legs with an arrow sticking out of his neck. She needs a Plan B.

“Dunmer.”

She cuts her eyes while she thinks, trying to raise her hands out of habit. _Archers on the walls, then, and three guards at the gate we came in. Can’t be sure how the civilians will respond._

“Dunmer, forward.”

_Five officers by the block. Is that a priest? Two more by the—_

“Dunmer!”

A hand between her shoulder blades shoves her forward—she’s already getting tired of that—and a man with a clipboard gives her a once-over. A face blinks in and out of her memory— _dark hair, bright eyes, pleasant smile_ —but she can’t hold onto it. It’s more confusing than useful.

He checks his list and looks up at her uncertainly. “Who are you?”

 _Mahariel,_ she almost says. _Of Clan Sabrae._ It is the first thing she knows for certain, though the images and words surrounding that name are hazy.

But she knows, somehow, that she has not been “of Clan Sabrae” for many years now, and what she does remember of “Mahariel” is fear, chains of all kinds, grief. She remembers running and secrets and false names in false places. So she stays quiet. For now.

The soldier looks to his superior. “We’ve no dunmer on the list, Captain.”

“Doesn’t matter,” his Captain says, waving her hand in dismissal toward his clipboard. “She goes to the block with the rest.”

 _The one time I actually keep my mouth shut,_ she thinks, _and it doesn’t help at all._

The thought brings some small realization, more vague memories. _Ah, that’s right. I’m a talker. “Mahariel,” Master Ilen always said, “You have to learn when to speak up and when to shut your fool mouth!”_

She can’t quite remember who Master Ilen is but she swells with affection all the same.

The soldier—a spineless lad, she decides quickly—tips his head toward her. “I’m sorry,” he says, but she doesn’t care: shemlen apologies never mean anything, she remembers. She tries to reach toward her ear, but the restraints don’t allow it; she isn’t sure what she was expecting.

The Captain jerks her forward and Mahariel’s had enough of this. _There was that too,_ she thinks. _I don’t like being pushed around._

“I am Mahariel,” she says, all fierceness and little thought. The words come to her unbidden; she doesn’t need to know them, only to let them fall out as they like. “I am a Ferelden Grey Warden and Vanquisher of the Fifth Fucking Blight and I demand you release me!” Still, even she is a bit surprised by the command in her voice, by the certainty with which she says these words she does not wholly know. The Captain pauses, only briefly, to give her a strange look before resuming her work and shoving Mahariel to her knees, pressing her against the block.

“I’m a Warden,” she fights out. “I’m a fucking Warden!” It’s all more rage than fear by now.

The headsman looms above her and a tower above him, casting a shadow over her final moments, and still she cannot reach the fear that must be sulking down in the pit of her belly. Instead, she looks to the tower, waiting for a hail of perfectly aimed arrows to save her. But the arrows don’t come.

“Nathaniel?”

Certainly he’s there. Here. Somewhere. He always is. Even still, knowing that, she can’t quite place the face that goes with that name. _I’m a Warden,_ she silently repeats, waiting for the mantra to bring her enlightenment, waiting for the words to heal the fragments of her mind. _I’m a Warden. I’m a Warden. I’m a Warden._

_What’s that mean?_

The axe descends but she refuses to shut her eyes. It never makes good on its path to her neck.

There’s a dragon.

 _Flemeth,_ she thinks. And Mahariel remembers them all.

...

Somehow, between the chopping block, the dragon, and the nonsensical words running through her head, Mahariel had ended up following one of the men from the wagon into the Keep.

When he cuts her hands loose, that’s when she gets a glimpse of just how off things are. She turns her hands over in front of her, wiggles her fingers uncertainly, rubs warmth into her arms. Her skin... it’s grey.

Her first thought is that this is the Blight. She must be dying. She must be turning. Her fate’s come early. She remembers Tamlen, those last, horrible moments of his second-life, his second death. She remembers the way his skin faded grey and mottled, paper thin and flaking. She remembers the smell, the milky haze in his eyes, the way her stomach pulled in his direction, like he was just another darkspawn.

Her stomach isn’t pulling.

She does not feel the way she felt on the long hike to Ostagar—there’s no pain, no staggering sickness.

This is not the Blight. And what’s more, she can’t feel anything.

 _“I’m a Grey Warden!”_ That’s what she’d yelled at the Captain, at those gawking over her execution. _“I’m a Grey Warden.”_

But there is no taint within her.

“Am I cured?” She’s not really talking to the man with her; she’s not sure who she’s talking to. It doesn’t much matter though because as she says it, she knows it’s true. She can feel it, or rather, she _can’t_ feel it.

“I am,” she says, a bit louder. “I’m cured. I’m _cured_!”

The revelation doesn’t soothe her.

“There’s still a lot between us and a safe escape, lass,” the man says, passing her a weathered helmet from the body of a nearby soldier. “We can toast your health later, if we live through this.”

...

He calls himself Ralof and sticks his hand out toward her for a shake when they finally escape, mostly unscathed. She hesitates a moment, her eyes darting from his outstretched hand to his eyes, looking for any sign of deceit or ill intent. Finally though, she takes his hand.

“Alright, shem,” she says, a bit relieved and a bit defeated.

“Ah, no,” he says, with a light chuckle as he drops his hand away and they begin their walk. “It’s Ralof.”

“Yes, you said that.” She looks at the land around them as they walk, trying to figure out how she got here—wherever _here_ is. As much as it looks like Ferelden in early winter, it most certainly is not. She’s been many places, but never here. Over the Donarks, perhaps? But this place is so cold...

He clears his throat after a few moments of her introspection before she thinks to offer her own name.

“Mahariel,” she says, her stride quickening with a peak of anxiety. “You may call me Mahariel.”

He quickens his own steps to keep up. Good thing too, for she has no idea where she is headed. “Is that dunmeri?”

“What?”

“Oh,” he says quickly. “Sorry, didn’t mean to, ah, offend you?”

He’s clearly just as uncertain of his offense as she is. But she doesn’t address it, in part because it doesn’t matter, whatever inconsequential offense he thinks he’s caused with words she doesn’t understand. Mostly, though, it is because her attention has been diverted: three oblong stones jut out of the ground, carvings still very visible in the weathered surfaces. Something about the artistry reminds her of home.

Ralof follows her gaze and soothes her uneasiness. “Standing stones,” he explains. “They grant boons—second cousin of mine found one made him strong as a cart ox.”

She puts her hand tentatively against one of the rocks, drags her fingertips across the rough surface, more amazed by the color of her skin than the years this stone must have weathered. She’s so sure her fingers should be brown, not grey. So sure they shouldn’t be so thin and long. This body—it lacks her brown skin, it lacks her muscle and weight, it lacks her taint.

 _But hey,_ she thinks, trying to keep calm. _At least I seem to be a bit taller._ It’s not enough to make her laugh; her poor attempts at humour in the face of lonely horror rarely do. The thick layer of sarcasm she wears between her and the world—it’s for the benefit of others more than herself. That’s one of the many half-truths she claims, anyway.

“You know,” she says, filling her voice with just enough disinterest. “I really think I shouldn’t be surprised by magic rocks at this point.”

He lets out a hearty laugh, a welcome sound even from a stranger. At least one of them feels better. “Standing stones,” he corrects her. “I reckon these things are older than Skyrim herself, seen the whole of our history.”

“I don’t suppose any of them specialize in clearing muddled memories.” This is the closest she has come to asking for help in a very long time.

“No,” he says, voice softening in pity. “No, I don’t believe we have a ‘magic rock’ for that, friend.”

She stares at her hand some more. _Friend._ She wishes he wouldn’t call her that. She doesn’t know him, hardly knows herself, her memories flung at her from the back of her mind like poison arrows. Every time he’s said the word, she’s overcome with a grief so heavy it threatens to bring her to her knees. Her friends—her family—they aren’t here. She doesn’t know where _here_ is, where she is. She doesn’t know how she got here, or how to get back. And she knows—she knows, she knows, she _knows_ —she was doing something important, something for her friends. She can’t remember what it was but she has to get back and finish it.

She lets her palm slide down and away, a pleasant scrape on her skin as she does so, and turns away from the silent standing stones to follow Ralof to Riverwood. She has nowhere else to go.

...

She tries her best to remember the names of her hosts. _Ralof. Gerdur. Hod._

It is important to her, remembering these names. _Ralof. Gerdur. Hod._

She thinks of Amaranthine, an old wound that will never close. All those names she never learned—it is a sin second only to the ones she forgot. Somewhere along the way, she lost that, remembering names. What was the name of the farmer she promised to protect? Who was the soldier she had to sentence for desertion? The name of the Guard Captain who lit the city on fire at her order? She doesn’t remember, so she repeats these new names again and again and again. _Ralof. Gerdur. Hod._

They give her a hot meal and a decent pair of clothes and a warm bed for the night in return for her service as a messenger in the morning. Skyrim—Creators, this language is strange in her mouth—seems, if at all possible, even less equipped to deal with dragons than Ferelden is. They’d not heard of Ferelden, nor of the Free Marches or Antiva. Not of Orlais or Nevarra, nor even Tevinter, no. Whiterun, they’d told her— _Ralof. Gerdur. Hod._ —the capitol city of this hold. Perhaps she can find answers there. It’s somewhere to start, at least.

“You know,” Ralof says, dropping down into the seat next to her at the table. “I noticed you had a pretty nasty bump on your head when they threw you into the wagon. Might explain the troubles you’re having.”

“You said we were near the border,” she says, keeping her eyes on the bread in her hand. Not even the wheat tastes quite the same. “What border?”

“We’d nearly made it to Riften, coming down through Eastmarch. Near the border of Morrowind.” Ralof takes a drink and Mahariel reminds herself to relax. These people— _Ralof. Gerdur. Hod._ —they’ve given her no reason to fear, no reason to mistrust. Surely a shem thus far so well behaved can have a drink in his own home without things going to shit. “I suppose it makes sense,” he continues. “Lots of Dark El—er, dunmer, over that way. Maybe you was crossing back over to get home, eh?”

Dunmer. There’s that word again. Nothing about it is familiar, not the sound or the feel of it sliding over her tongue. But that must be... _me,_ she reasons.

“And how do I get to Riften, then?”

He seems to hesitate at that, but speaks up after a pause, the worry not well hidden in his voice. “You can get a carriage from Whiterun.”

“I said I’d go,” she almost spits, offended by the implication that she wouldn’t keep her word. _But then,_ she thinks, glimpsing again at the drink in his hand, _I’m not exactly overflowing with trust myself._

“Of course,” he amends, face reddening with anger or shame or drink she isn’t sure. “As I said, you can get a carriage from there, or you can head along White River and turn south where it meets Darkwater. Follow the river and you’ll hit Riften eventually. Take a few days, though.”

She only nods in thanks before finishing her bread and making her way to Gerdur’s spare bed.

...

That night, she dreams of talking dragons. Gods help her, the giant blasted lizards won’t shut up!

_“I’m trying to sleep,” she says. “Haven’t I earned a rest? Haven’t I earned a single night of rest without screeching darkspawn and blasted dragons trying to take everything I care about? Can’t you fucking lizard monsters just let me have some peace? This is not the life I wanted! I didn’t ask for any of this!”_

_“Hin sil fen nahkip bahloki,” one says._

_Mahariel doesn’t know what that means but a ready response comes roaring out of her anyway. “I’d like to see you try, you scaly, horn-headed bat.” Then the dragon fades away._

_The other dragon laughs—the sound is familiar. Mahariel thinks of old women, hiding in the forest, veiled in vines and mist and half-lies. “I have missed your particular brand of bravery and wit,” the dragon says. “I hope you put it to good use while you are here.”_

_“And where the hell am I exactly?” The tone of her voice doesn’t match the words; Mahariel knows better than to be to rude to this woman._

_Wait, but this isn’t a woman. It’s a dragon._

_“You are free,” the dragon says. “How long have you been asking for that? I have given it to you.”_

_Mahariel doesn’t understand. She doesn’t remember ever asking a dragon for anything. Her memories with dragons—muddled as they are—are all far less civil. “Given me what? What are you talking about?”_

_“You, my dear, already know the costs of many things. Nothing is free—of price or consequence. There are some things you cannot escape; it is not a matter of what you deserve.” The dragon starts to fade away, falling back into the darkness._

_“Wait!” Mahariel reaches out a hand but her fingers meet nothing. “Wait! What are you talking about? Why are you always so bloody cryptic?”_

_Everything goes white._

Mahariel bolts upright in her borrowed bed, sweating and panting. The pink light of early dawn falls through the chimney above the hearth. She decides to leave early.

She pulls on the boots, a bit too large for her smaller feet, and thinks to leave a note of thanks by Ralof’s bed. There’s a quill and a few rolls of paper nearby but when she moves to take them, she realizes she doesn’t know how to write. _But that’s wrong,_ she thinks. _Leliana taught me to write, I remember._

She shoves her frustration aside, thinking instead if she should wake him, or leave some token of gratitude. The problem is that she has nothing to leave; she has only a knife and a bow she picked up during their escape, only the clothes Gerdur has given her. In the end, it doesn’t matter because Ralof stirs, turning over in bed to face her and letting a groggy, scratchy “good morning” fall from his lips.

It reminds her of Alistair, never one for early morning marching. _We could just stay in bed,_ he’s always quick to say. And she always considers it, even knowing it isn’t really an option.

“Heading out then?” Ralof doesn’t rise from the bed, only wraps his arms tighter around the scantily stuffed sack he’s using as a pillow.

Mahariel nods.

“Divines keep you then,” he says. She doesn’t know what to say to that. After a breath, just long enough for her to feel awkward, he clears his throat and speaks again, the sluggishness of sleep starting to wear away. “If you don’t find what you’re looking for in Riften, you might try Windhelm. Ulfric’s forces are—”

She holds up her hand to cut him off. He’d mentioned the war on their walk into town and she’s had enough of civil wars. “I hardly remember my own name and you want to me join your fight for a land that isn’t mine?”

“Fair point,” he submits. “But I was also thinking of the Grey Quarter.”

She lets her weight fall onto her other leg and slips her quiver over her shoulder. “What’s that?”

“Lots of Dark—ah, dunmer refugees in that part of town. If you came over recently, someone there might know you. And I’ll be heading that way soon. Maybe... Maybe when your business with Jarl Balgruuf is done... Well, maybe we meet on the road outside the city, make our way there together.”

She doesn’t realize she’s taken a step back until she hears the floor creak underneath her foot. Still, she doesn’t mean it nearly so acidic as it comes out when she tilts up her chin and looks down at him with suspicion and demands why.

“No, no,” he says, with a small chuckle. “Not to worry; I’ll not be trying to recruit you anymore. The roads of Skyrim can get quiet is all. And considering we survived certain death two or three times over yesterday, I’d say we make a decent team.”

“I’ll... consider it,” she says. He nods and grins, a bit too enthusiastically, and she hurries to clarify. “No promises though. If I can get to Riften, I’m going. If that’s the last place I was...”

“Sure, sure,” he says, loosening his hold on his pillow to wave off any concern. “I understand.” But he’s still grinning.

As she gently shuts the door behind her, she hears him once more repeat that phrase: “Divines keep you.”

...

Hell if she knows what prompts her to do it. In fact, “prompt’ isn’t the right word. There’s nothing so gentle as “prompting” about it. She sees the elf down by the mill and her legs take her forward before she even has time to consider it.

He’s carrying wood across the little bridge and she knows—somehow, she knows—that he will not have the answers she wants. And yet.

“Excuse me,” she says, catching up with him.

“Yes?” When he turns toward her, he smiles warmly. “Ah, greetings sister. It is good to see a familiar face—well, more familiar than the Nords, at least.”

 _Sister. Lethallin,_ she thinks. But he hadn’t said that. “I’m sorry to trouble you,” she says, gripping his arm a bit too tightly in her haste. “Have you heard of any Dalish nearby?”

“Dalish?” He struggles with the word and the confusion on his face answers her question more than his words could. “I’m sorry; I don’t know what you mean.”

“Oh. Of course.” She’s not able to hide her shattering disappointment and he stammers out another apology, but there’s no need. It’s not his fault, nor his problem. Her initial theory—that she must have made her way to the uncharted areas above the Donarks—is all but shot by now. This place, it’s something else.

“Ma serannas,” she says, and again his brows are drawn together in confusion, but he nods anyway before returning to his work. Mahariel stands there a moment longer, pressing the heel of her hand against her temple where she feels the throb of the injury Ralof pointed out. A headache, definitely. She’ll not last the hour without a headache. She turns on her heel, leaving a tiny depression in the soft earth, and starts her trek to Whiterun.


	2. Interim I: Ralof's Tour

“Divines keep you,” he tells her again, as he watches her leave. And he means it. May his gods, and hers too, watch over her.

When the door clicks shut—the quiet sound of an ending, if ever he’s heard one—he stays in bed, although he doesn’t go back to sleep. He’s half a mind to just go after her, but he doesn’t. They’ve both their own paths, their own choices and journeys to make; he’ll not be what stands between her and her way.

Having been stationed in Windhelm so long and having done so much scouting along the eastern holds, Ralof is no stranger to Dark Elves—er,  _dunmer,_ he corrects himself, only all too aware of their preference for their proper name.

And he serves with plenty of women—women as weathered and brave and strong as any man he’s ever known (and some braver and stronger than them all).

He’s not sure why  _this_ dunmer, why  _this_ woman makes him stammering nervous.

It’s not lust, no. (He’s got his eyes on a sweetheart he met up north last year, and Ralof is not a man who wanders.) But there’s a certain... allure to her, perhaps. He’s learned well that a woman knows how to keep her secrets, that they’ve all got a certain air of mystery about them, but this woman—by Oblivion, she doesn’t even know where she is. Doesn’t know the name of the country she’s in or the nature of the war. Doesn’t even seem to know who she is herself. She's got more mystery than she can handle, he'd wager. 

Fights as well as any Nord too, though he’s unsure if she’d take that as the compliment he means for it to be.

When they’d stopped at the Guardian Stones up the road, she’d broken his heart. Lass had spent as much time watching her own hands as she had watching the road around them for dragons or Imperials or wolves.

“Standing Stones,” he’d explained, because she seemed so unsure. _I used to sit next to the Warrior’s Stone as a boy,_ he didn’t tell her. _Just praying it would give me the strength I needed so I could be the man my ma needed me to be. Damn thing never so much as whispered to me._

“Bleak Falls Barrow,” he’d pointed out, because she'd needed a distraction. _I’ve always hated that thing,_ he didn’t tell her. _Always made me feel like something was coming for me, for us all. And now, with the war and the dragons, seems something has come after all._

“My sister owns this mill,” he’d said, because he was finally home.  _I’m so damned proud of her,_ he didn’t tell her.  _We were always so close when we were young. Seems like all we ever talk about now is Ulfric, the war, the death, the Empire. Seems like I’m losing more than I’m gaining some days, but gods, I am so proud of her._

“Alvor’s the blacksmith,” he’d told her because he’s always been bad at small talk. “Might help you out, might not. Depends on his mood, really, or that of his wife.”  _I once stole a hammer from his pa,_ he didn’t tell her.  _In our younger days, he used to tease Gerdur. Made her mad as a sabrecat and so we stole his pa’s hammer and Alvor got blamed. Sweet revenge, that was._

“Inn’s just over there, if you don’t want to stay with us,” he’d offered. “I’m sure we can scrape together enough coin for a night.” But she’d shrugged that off—more willing to stay with a stranger she’d known for a day than a bunch of strangers she hadn’t, he’d reckoned.  _Sometimes I’ll stop in there,_ he didn’t tell her.  _When I have the rare fortune to come through here. Spend the whole of my lousy pay on enough drink to forget there’s a war on at all. Sometimes when I’m sober, I wonder what we’re doing all this for, if there isn’t another way. Then I get drunk and sing my troubles away like a dying wolf._

He doesn’t know why he’d wanted to tell her all those things—to take her on a tour of his life in this village. Surely none of it would have mattered to her.

 _No,_ he thinks.  _That’s not true._

It’d have mattered, but he doesn’t know why. It's that air of mystery again, he supposes, for lack of any better thought.

He turns over in bed and looks at the door. He knows he will not find her outside Whiterun. He hopes against certainty that he will, but he won’t. He hopes that, eventually, he will at least find her again in Windhelm. Then he thinks again of the Gray Quarter—the squalor and the poverty and the way he pretends he doesn’t see how Ulfric sneers at their misfortunes—and he hopes he won’t ever see her there at all.

Somewhere, there’s folks waiting for her, he knows. Somewhere, in some place he’s never been, there’s folks looking to the horizon, as certain as he is that she’s heading home. And he's ashamed to admit that he's glad she left, that he's glad he won't see her again, for he can tell already that too much time spent with her would force him to see all the things he spends so much time trying not to think about. 

 _A grand and pressing soul, she has,_ he thinks. _The kind that draws you in like a warm fire, sweet and good and all you could want 'til you realize you're burning._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The "Interim" chapters are short(er) chapters, sort of scattered throughout the story, that are from the POV of other characters. They're mostly supplementary, but some of them are pretty important to the narrative.


	3. Whiterun

Although the trip to Whiterun is short—a few hours at most—it only reinforces the idea that this body is not hers.

Her legs were strong, used to long walks and running and hunting and climbing. The ache in her muscles reminds her of their trek through the mountains to Orzammar—her own, albeit silent, complaining second only to Alistair’s. Even Wynne, old joints and all, had taken the trip with more dignity.

But this body? Used to running, perhaps, but not to running on so little fuel. That’s why it’s so thin, she’s sure—malnourishment. Gods, she feels like she’s never eaten, save the bread she had last night.

Her resolve doesn’t falter ‘til she’s in front of the gates, a guard waiting for a reason to let her in at all. That’s when it hits, that inner conflict she’d never thought there’d be the chance to have: _I could just go to Riften,_ she thinks. _I’ve paid my dues and more; I can be done with dragons._

But then another thought: _Ralof. Gerdur. Hod._ They’d given her aid; she’d given her word.

She shakes her head. If nothing else, she needs supplies—some food, a waterskin, a bit of gold lifted from a fat pocket. She takes a deep breath.

“Riverwood sends for aid.”

...

Mahariel is hardly listening to the Jarl; she’s never been one for shemlen decorum, never been one to honor kings not her own or serve men who don’t serve her. More importantly, her eyes wander his court in search of the woman who greeted her, _a dunmer,_ she thinks hesitantly. _...Like me._ Although “greet” is far too kind a word for the harsh reception she received. No matter, the woman has slipped from her sight so Mahariel stands there, absently nodding her head as the Jarl rambles about initiative and gratitude. The only words she cares to catch are “send a detachment,” “Riverwood,” and “immediately.” Elsewise, she doesn’t really care for his speech. She wonders if he would slouch on his throne like that if he knew her place in her world: she dines with royalty, negotiates with the Triumvirate, has had a hand in more than a few high-profile assassinations.

“There is another matter,” he continues and Mahariel knows that tone of voice. It’s the I-need-a-favour-good-stranger tone of voice. There’s not much in the way of an easy out with all the guards in this room and so much open space between her and the door. “My Court Wizard has been doing some research.”

That gets her attention. Court Wizards. The Circle. Some things never change, it seems. Lovely.

She follows the Jarl into the wizard’s quarters, more for a lack of viable escape options than anything else. She doesn’t see any templars nearby but she’s used to a particular uniform; the robes and armours of this place aren’t familiar at all. For all she knows, she’s looked into the face of many a templar already.

“I see you have found me an assistant.” The stern voice of the Court Wizard jolts her from her thoughts. She watches him warily, knowing better than to a trust a man who hides any part of his face—it is, after all, a trick she employs quite often herself. “As you are obviously aware, we seem to be having a bit of a dragon problem.”

“Quite an understatement, but sure,” she throws back, already unimpressed with the direction of his words and the arrogance with which he delivers them.

“You look a bit... scrawny to me. A bit unimpressive, even.”

Definitely not the worst thing a shem’s ever said to her. “And yet here I stand, expected to offer my services. I assume this is because you are a bit scrawny, a bit unimpressive, lacking in the ability to solve your problem yourself. Desperate too, if turning to a complete and scrawny stranger is any indication.”

The Jarl’s laugh rings out to her left. “Feisty, isn’t she? Don’t think you’ll have an easy time of this one, Farengar.”

The wizard grins. “It certainly seems that way.” He turns back to her, the grin wiped from his face and the stern demeanour returning. “There is an artifact that may help us. The information gleaned from it could save us all, dire as the situation seems.”

She doesn’t think it seems all that dire. One blasted dragon. Gods, she’s killed more than one in a single day. Still, they certainly seem concerned enough to warrant her attention—especially considering that she can’t get the hell out of here.

“My sources say it can be found in Bleak Falls Barrow. The ruin is located—”

“Yeah,” she says, indifferent to the tight line of his lips when she interrupts him. “I know where it is.”

...

Her words had been careful—not a no, certainly not a yes. The wizard had caught it, but the Jarl had not. Regardless, she doesn’t plan to leave the city today; too late in the afternoon to get a good start and, to be blunt, she’s tired.

She spends the afternoon in the high grass outside the city walls, loosing arrows into the local game. Several times her gaze wanders from her hunt and toward the road; she doesn’t bother pretending she isn’t looking for Ralof. She’d be relieved to see him, she knows, but she’s also relieved not to. She drags meat and hides back and forth from the plains into the city market to trade. She does not find the dunmer woman, but two more elves—more like the one in Riverwood than like her—tell her they know nothing of the Dalish.

She buys herself a room at the inn (as well as a drink because she bloody well deserves it).

There is a hand-mirror in her room. Not at all like the elegantly framed, full length monstrosity that took Tamlen, but still. She’s never felt easy with looking-glasses since, avoids them as much as possible. Anders used to tease her about it, tell her how it was a shame she couldn’t spare a moment to appreciate her beauty. _I spend far more time looking at you,_ he’d say. _Seems unfair._ Mouthy, magey bastard. The thought almost makes her cry. Gods damn it all, she wants to go home!

After she’s disrobed and with one hand clapped securely over her mouth— _not going to burst into tears in some strange inn,_ she thinks, _not me_ —she lifts the mirror and tilts it toward herself, avoiding her face. She isn’t ready to see. Her legs, her arms, her torso, it’s all the same dark grey. Not at all, now she’s had time to calm down, the color of a Blighted soul, but not at all the color of her skin either. Not paint, no. Not ink. It’s skin, sure enough, and that dunmer woman in the palace had been evidence enough, but still, she feels so foreign to herself. Her nails are the same, she notes—short and chipped and worn smooth from leather gloves. She’s almost the same size, save a bit of missing weight and an extra bit of height. Why, she must be at least four inches taller!

There’s a thought then and she whips around, nearly dropping the mirror on the floor. She’s glad she kept a hand on her mouth, though it hardly muffles her startled screech. _It’s there!_ The little mole on her hip. She shuts her eyes tight, remembering lips pressing kisses there, warm breath and laughter. _It’s there, it’s there, it’s there._

A few tears squeeze through, she can’t help it. But at least they aren’t for sadness. Tears of relief, she can handle, she can claim. And there’s not a soul to see her anyway.

With few excuses left and knowing she’ll only get sicker with anxiety the longer she waits, she lifts the mirror to her face.

There is a clear difference—the face looking back at her is not brown and flushed with biting cold, the scars of battle and laughable accident are gone, her green eyes are green no longer. As Ralof said, there is a purple bruise on her temple, the size of an apple, and accompanied by a scabbing cut. Her hair, once brown, is still thick with curls and frizz but is now several shades darker, almost black. She moves her hand from her mouth and caresses the tip of her ear, restored after over a decade missing. But her nose is the same, and the fullness of her lips. The shape of her eyes and the set of them—the hardness she has gained over these years, that, unlike her ear, has not been reset. More amazing than all of that though, are the dull red patterns across her face, lines and dots sloped and speckled along her cheeks and forehead and chin. Her vallaslin.

Even when she was with her clan, she can’t say she was ever all that devout. Yet she feels her hands tighten around the handle of the mirror and she can’t help that a touch of gratefulness swells in her chest, to Dirthamen, perhaps, or to whatever person or god or thing put her here in this body that isn’t hers and left her with this token, at least. She sends up a prayer as well, not with words exactly, but with more want and willingness than she’s ever had, that her people will be safe until she returns.

The biggest difference, no matter how she looks, is on the inside, though.

 _Cured._ How long has she wanted to use that word? And now she finds herself free of the Blight and all she feels is anxiety. Walking along the road had been torturous: not being able to tell if there were darkspawn nearby, not being able to sense her Wardens. Perhaps it is because she never wanted to be cured _alone,_ or perhaps she now realizes she never wanted to be cured at all. It doesn’t feel like a cure. It feels like she has lost part of her soul.

...

In her dreams, she is standing on a parapet. In her old body and her new one.

_“Alistair is going to be so pissed,” her old body says. “Probably going to blame Morrigan.”_

_“Nothing new there,” her new body says, as though she knows what they’re talking about._

_“Do you think he’ll forgive you?” Her old body looks at her feet, shuffling in the way Mahariel remembers means she’s done something she regrets._

_“I’m not the one he’ll be cross with,” her new body says. “That’s your problem. You’re the one’s gone.”_

_Her old body grimaces and pales a bit at the prospect of facing such consequences alone. Mahariel can relate: she’d seen Alistair cry only twice and both times on her account. Not something she’d enjoyed watching, his pain._

_“Warden,” her new body says, drawing her old body out of its quiet worry. “Do you know where I am? Do you know how I can get back?”_

_“That’s your problem,” her old body says. “You’re the one’s gone.” Her old body grins and Mahariel wants to smack the smugness right off her own face. Sarcastic shits, the both of her._

...

In the morning, she packs her bag with as much water and dried meat as she can afford from the stall in the market. A bosmer, the elf explains, as though she should know.

He not so sneakily sneaks in a few extra portions.

“A kindness, sister,” he explains, in answer to her questioning stare. “You may not find it among the Nords.”

“Ma serannas, lethallin.” He is as uncertain of her words as the elf in Riverwood had been, but he accepts them nonetheless.

 _Anoriath,_ she tells herself on her way out the gates. _And Elrindir._

More names she does not want to forget.

_Anoriath. Elrindir. Anoriath. Elrindir._

Once outside the gates of Whiterun, she stands uncertainly at the place the road splits. She approaches the stable yard by the city wall, and digs her hand into the pouch at her belt, rubbing the pads of her fingers against the few coins she’s collected. “How much for a carriage to Riften?”

The driver looks down at her, running his fingers through his beard. “Not going anywhere ‘til tomorrow morning, miss.”

“Yes, alright, but how much?”

“Fifty gold.”

She hasn’t yet quite got the hang of their money—the weight of the coins is a bit heavier than those back home and she has a hard time comparing their worth—but she knows to never take a price first named. “Thirty,” she says sternly.

“Forty, not a cent less.”

She smirks and nods her head. “Alright then.”

She looks back the way she came, toward Riverwood and the Barrow Ralof had pointed out along their way. If she leaves now, she’s certain she can make it to the village before noon. She’s equally certain that a helping hand will be found in Gerdur’s house, maybe having not yet left the comfort of a warm bed. She imagines the secret artifact, waiting somewhere in the depths of the old tomb for her to find it, for her to bring it to people who can use it to help. She imagines Ralof making his way carefully down the road, on the lookout for Imperial soldiers and hoping he’ll find her along the way.

She adjusts the weight of her bag over her shoulder, double checks her bow and knives with a quick pat, and begins walking northeast along the river, Riverwood and Ralof and the Barrow falling farther and farther behind her.

 _Gods help these people,_ she begs. _I never asked to be anyone’s hero._

...

Ralof was right about the quiet and the solitude across Skyrim. It has been so very long since she walked along a public road, no worry that the wrong person would recognize her face or that a darkspawn party would decide to come up from the ground like pus from a wound. It has been so long since her heavy heart was lightened by the cool air of an autumn, unspoiled by the taint singing her dirge in the dark corners of her mind.

It seems that her muscles need reconditioning, but the feel of a tightly drawn bow-string is as familiar as ever. She shoots rabbits and wolves when they approach, stopping only to clean the hides and pack the meat as well as she can with her limited carry space. She sells most of it off to hunters and traders along the road, even meets a wandering minstrel late in the afternoon, her third day on the journey, and they make camp together in a nearby cave, sharing her roasted rabbit and his remaining tomatoes.

She doesn’t dream. The laughing dragon does not return in her sleep and, thankfully, no real dragons appear in her waking hours.

...

It is her fourth day toward Riften when her resolve falters.

Her last arrow breaks in the body of a particularly determined wolf— _damned things are worse here than they are at home, that’s for certain_ —and the worry that she will never get back overwhelms her.

No one she’s encountered thus far has had any idea what she’s talking about—there are not even rumours of Dalish here, no Warden outposts, not a soul has heard of the Ferelden Crown or the Arishok or even the godsdammed Chantry. She can’t say she’s missing the latter, but at least that would provide her some sort of link. There’s nothing here! The minstrel she camped with even drew her a blasted map in the dust and Antiva, Orlais, Nevarra—they weren’t on it.

She kneels on the stones of the road and clenches the fur of the dead beast in her hand and bites her lip ‘til it bleeds to keep from bursting into tears.

Fen'Harel’s ass, she misses Nathaniel.

 _What are they doing now,_ she wonders. _Are they looking for me? Are they worried? Are they waiting?_

It’s been six days since she woke up in that damned cart, and gods only know how long she was here before that! If only she could remember what came before, if only she could remember how she got here! She presses her knuckles against the bruise on her temple, as if she can force her memory back out of pure spite for her injury.

That’s when she hears the unmistakable twang of a blacksmith’s station.

Forgoing the removal of the arrowhead, she lifts the carcass and, with not a little effort, swings it around her shoulders, holding it steady by the feet. She’ll clean it later; gods, she’ll sell the whole damned thing for a clean drink of water and a map and a bed if she can get it.

The clang of metal on metal grows louder as she approaches and soon enough she can hear the chatter of chickens and people alike.

It’s not a town, as she’d hoped, but a camp near a mine. There’s a single house, a plot of farm too small to feed a family, and a row of tents around a smoking fire pit.

“Mama!”

Mahariel hears the little girl before she sees her. A small thing—thin cheeks and wrists and the tan of a child of the field.

“Mama,” she calls again. “There’s another elf here!”

From around the row of tents comes a woman and an elvhen man. Dunmer, she notes, a small bit of hope blooming in her chest.

“Traveller,” the woman says with a quick nod. “Care for a spot ‘round the fire?”

...

Darkwater Crossing. Ralof had said the troops had come up through here before the ambush, but no one here knew much about it. Or about her.

_Hrefna. Sondas. Tormir. Annekke. Verner._

More names she wants to remember. These people are kind. She can see, over the course of the afternoon, that they are the type to work as hard as the rock they mine.

“Yeah, I thought about it,” Tormir, the little girl’s mother, says when Mahariel asks why she doesn’t pack up and move on if the mine’s doing so poorly. “But we’ve made it so far; it’s a living, one I know. And my little girl—sometimes I think she doesn’t know the first thing about being a Nord, even here so close to the heart of the rebellion. But still, I could never take her away from these people, and Sondas, he’d never leave the mine. It’s not much. Sometimes it’s not enough. But it’s a home.”

“Yeah,” Mahariel says, holding a stick full of fish over the fire. “I know what you mean about that.”

“Where’re you from? Morrowind, I assume?”

“Ah, no. I’m from—” But what can she say? _I’m from a place that doesn’t seem to exist._ “Coastal city, up north. I was, ah, stationed there. Vigil’s Keep.” She smiles fondly at the memories, horrible though they mainly were. “Wasn’t much,” she starts.

“But it was home,” Tormir finishes for her, holding her mug up in a small toast.

“Yeah. It was home.”

They give her the spare bedroll by the fire—the only free tent, they say, because one of their people hasn’t come back to claim it.

Hrefna, the little girl, deflates at the mention of it. “I miss him a lot,” she says. “He used to take me fishing.”

Mahariel doesn’t dare ask what happened to the man. Instead, she thanks her hosts, silently recalling their names once again— _Sondas, Tormir, Hrefna, Annekke, Verner_ —and slips into the pile of furs that makes up her quarters for the night.

She dreams of the laughing dragon again.

_“I want to go home,” her new body says to the dragon. “I need to go home.”_

_The dragon shakes its head and Mahariel thinks it is pity. She doesn’t need pity. She needs to go home._

_“This is what is needed now,” the dragon says._

_“I don’t care what you think I need! You’re wrong!”_

_But the dragon isn’t a dragon now; it wears instead Mahariel’s own face, her old face, scars and skin and only one full ear. “Haven’t I earned a rest? This is not the life I wanted,” the not-dragon says with her mouth and her voice. “I didn’t ask for any of this!”_

_Mahariel remembers that. She said that. She did. But when? She can’t remember._

_The dragon-no-longer goes on though, more words Mahariel knows she said, but can’t place. “I’ve paid my dues! I’m done with dragons. I never asked to be anyone’s hero.”_

_Mahariel covers her face—this dragon sees too much of her. “But they need me. I have to go back. They need me.”_

_There’s a hand on her shoulder, comfort in the dragon’s voice, but Mahariel can’t look. “Oh, child,” the dragon says. “Oh, child. Our world has not been kind to us.”_

_“No,” Mahariel agrees. “It hasn’t.”_

_When the dragon doesn’t speak again, Mahariel ventures a question. “Is this punishment?”_

_“Repayment,” the dragon says. “Once you took my words to heart. Would it be so hard to do it again?”_

_“I don’t understand.” Mahariel can’t stop her tears. She’s not cried in front of anyone for a long, long while, but now, she can’t hold back her grief._

_“When I was young,” the dragon says, “I got the life I asked for. But nothing is ever free—”_

_“Of price or consequence,” Mahariel finishes._

_“Yes.” The dragon’s voice is full of grief—not Mahariel’s perhaps, but its own. “A lesson needed learning, child, and here is the place to do it.”_

_“Then just tell me! Just tell me and let me go home!” She finally looks up, wanting to stare into the eyes of the one keeping her here, but the dragon is not there. There’s nothing but the voice of a woman of the wilds, echoing through the dark of the void._

_“It is no longer within my power to do anything with you.”_

_“No!” She drags her hands through her hair, pulling it in frustration, screaming into the encroaching dark. “No! I don’t accept that! No!”_

_“This life is all you have now. Do not take it for granted, child; it will come to a close soon enough.”_

...

In the morning, something is stewing in the pit of Mahariel’s stomach. Her movements are slow and clumsy, her mind is hazy and her heart unwilling.

What if Riften holds the answers and they aren’t what she wants to hear? What if the dragon—

 _It’s a damned dream,_ she tells herself. _Just a dream._

Her frustration must show on her face because while she’s packing up her bag, Tormir approaches her with a pickaxe.

“Doesn’t seem like you’re in a hurry to get where you’re going,” she says kindly.

“I suppose not.”

“I’ve always thought that good, old fashioned manual labour was good for clearing the mind.” Tormir holds the pickaxe toward her and Mahariel gratefully takes the excuse to stay. _Just one more day,_ she tells herself. _One more day to think._

She swings her axe to the beat of her worries for several hours.

_The dragon is just a dream. The dragon is just a dream._

But that night, as she sits once again around the fire, smoking bits of fish with the miners, a frightening thought creeps its way into her mind.

_What if Thedas is the dream?_

“Annekke?” Mahariel turns to the woman, remembering what she’d said yesterday about her travels. _Been from one end of Tamriel to the other,_ the woman had said.

Annekke takes a drink and shifts in her seat, waiting for Mahariel’s question.

“Were you ever in Ferelden?” Mahariel holds her breath, waiting for yet another answer she doesn’t want to hear.

“Ferelden? That a city? Can’t say I know it,” Annekke says.

“What about the Anderfells? Tevinter?” Mahariel tries to hide her desperation, but she can’t quite manage it. “Orlais? Antiva?”

“Ah, no, sorry. Are those... in Cyrodiil? Hammerfell?”

Mahariel just shakes her head and not-so-eloquently shifts the subject. “So, I’ve heard there aren’t any Warden outposts in this country. You all don’t have problems with darkspawn much?”

“Dark... spawn?” Annekke shoots the others a look over the fire. “I’ve never heard of such a thing.”

“Darkspawn, Annekke.” Mahariel begins to wave her hands as she talks, her panic bleeding into her limbs and making her fingers and toes buzz. “Hurlocks and shrieks and genlocks. Darkspawn.” Everyone shares a blank look, a look that says they think she’s lost her mind, and that pushes her over the edge. “Darkspawn! Monsters! They come up from the ground during a Blight. They—”

“Monsters?” Hrefna pulls her knees up and holds them tightly to her chest.

Tormir hurries to calm the fear that Mahariel has planted. “Ah, no, dear, they aren’t real. Mahariel is just telling a scary story, right?”

Mahariel’s mouth pops open. _Dammit._ “Right,” she says quickly. “Sorry, Hrefna, it was just a story.”

Hrefna seems to take this well and Mahariel can see the girl’s grip on her mother’s hand loosen.

“I’m... I’m going to turn in for the night,” she says, pressing her hand against the still sore spot on her temple. “Thanks for—well, for the bed and...” She trails off and exhales, unable to express gratitude and apology after what’s just transpired.

“Of course, dear,” Tormir says. “Sleep well.”

...

Mahariel does not sleep well.

_Her new body is with Hrefna, roasting fish over the fire. She thinks there is something behind her—she thinks it is a dragon—but every time she turns to look, there is nothing there._

_“I love salmon,” Mahariel says._

_“This is slaughterfish,” Hrefna reminds her._

_And of course it is. Mahariel looks behind her, but she cannot see a dragon._

_“I love slaughterfish,” Mahariel says._

_Hrefna smiles and agrees, taking a big bite._

_“Where are you from, Mahariel?”_

_“Morrowind,” she says without pause, turning to look behind her again. There is a dragon, she is sure, but she cannot see it. “A coastal city in the north. But now I’m a miner.”_

_Hrefna seems confused by this. “Were you always a miner?”_

_“No,” Mahariel tells her. “I was... a soldier, I think.” There! Behind her! That was a wing! Wasn’t it?_

_“Did you forget?”_

_“I hit my head,” she explains, pointing to the spot on her temple where the bruise is still visible. “But I remember now. A rock fell and hit me in the head and I forgot.”_

_“That’s a funny story,” Hrefna says, giggling a bit at Mahariel’s misfortune. “Do you know any more funny stories?”_

_“I know a story about an elf who ran away from home,” she offers, although she doesn’t think Hrefna will like it._

_“That’s not funny at all,” the little girl says. “Where’d you hear a story like that?”_

_“I read it in a book, I think,” Mahariel says. She turns around again, but she cannot see the dragon. “But I can’t quite recall all the details.”_

...

Another day passes and Mahariel doesn’t leave the mine.

 _One more day to think,_ she decides. She slings her pickaxe carefully over her back and heads into the mines. The work is good for her—the damp air and the metal dust, not so much, but the work is making her body stronger.

Later she decides to go hunting; everyone will be happy to eat something other than fish tonight.

...

Mahariel drags her finger along the dirt, trying to remember where the lines should go.

“What’re you doing there, lass?” Sondas, the dunmer who is not from Morrowind, has his pickaxe slung over his shoulder when he approaches her. It’s early, just barely light, and aside from a lone guard patrolling the perimeter, they’re the only people awake.

“Making a map,” she says quietly. She’s not quite sure, really.

Sondas crouches down next to her and inspects her poorly drawn map. “Bit sparse, isn’t it?”

She nods. _There’s Ferelden and Orlais,_ she reminds herself. _And that should be High Rock..._

“No,” she says aloud, shaking her head. “That’s... That’s... I can’t remember.”

“It’s alright, lass. It’s fine.” Sondas rests his heavy hand on her shoulder and she has to fight the tears. She’s been fighting tears far too much these last few days.

“Sondas, I can’t remember what’s north of Orlais. I can’t remember.” She wipes her face with her sleeve, scrubbing the fabric against her skin hard enough to leave red marks. Anything to keep the grief at bay. “I can’t...”

Sondas grips her ‘round her arms and pulls her to her feet. He looks her in the eyes and dusts off her clothes and offers her his arm like... like someone used to do.

“Let’s go inside; Annekke’s got an old map we can look at. How’s that?”

She sniffles. Gods damn her, she actually sniffles. _I am thirty years old,_ she scolds herself. _I am thirty years old and sniffling like a child in front of a stranger. I’m a bloody war hero._

_Aren’t I?_

But she can’t remember what they called the war. She can’t remember which side she fought for. She can’t remember if she won.

“Come on,” Sondas says, steering her through Annekke’s doorway. “Let’s have a look.”

He pulls a chair away from the small table for her. It reminds her of someone. Then he spreads out a thick sheet of paper, a map of Tamriel.

“See here,” he says, pointing at the one in the middle. “You know this one, don’t you?”

She stares at the strange markings, trying to make sense of the letters but she can’t. “I can’t read this,” she says, her frustration only growing.

“That’s ok,” he says, leaning over her chair.

 _But it isn’t,_ she thinks. _I can read. I know I can. I learned. She taught me. Someone taught me._

“This one is Skyrim and this,” he says, pointing to a spot by a river, “is where we are, Darkwater. This part is—”

“Morrowind,” she finishes. “And that’s Orlais—no, that’s Cyrodiil.”

There’s a loud sound—a roar like she’s standing underneath a waterfall—and Mahariel jerks awake, bundled in her pile of furs like they’re strangling her.

She hadn’t known she’d been asleep. It had felt so real.

 _Leliana,_ she tells herself quickly, wiping the sweat from her face and trying to steady her breath. _Leliana taught me to read._

_Nathaniel always offers me his arm and Alistair pulls out my chair. Calls himself a young gentleman and blushes when I tease him._

_I led the armies at Denerim. I killed the Archdemon. I’m the Hero of Ferelden._

_And I fucking hate Orlais._

...

The mindless swinging of the pickaxe is good for keeping her body busy, but less so her mind. She feels sick and everything is hazy and the panic is welling up in her throat like bile.

_I can’t have just dreamed it all. I can’t have._

Nameless faces and faceless names flit in and out of her head. A blonde elf with tattoos. A child called Kieran. A burly ginger with a beard. An archer called Nathaniel. A raven-haired woman with a subtle smile. Late nights drinking in the main hall. Midnight raids on their own larder. Her vallaslin.

_I can’t have made all that up._

“Mahariel, you feeling alright?”

She looks up from her work to see Tormir, watching her cautiously.

“Fine,” she says. “I’m fine.”

She’s not fine. She’s sweating, despite the cool air of the mine, and everything... everything looks like it’s glowing ‘round the edges. She really might vomit.

“Really? Because you’ve been hacking away at the tunnel wall for twenty minutes.”

“What?” Mahariel looks wide-eyed at the wall, where her mindless beating has left a growing hole. “Shit! I’ll fix that, I promise!”

Tormir smiles; it’s a sincere gesture, but also the smile of a mother when her young child has tested all patience, never mind that they are the same age. She puts her hand against Mahariel’s forehead and her eyebrows knit together. “Getting a bit of a fever, I think. Why don’t you head back up and check on Hrefna? Get some rest?”

Mahariel nods, defeated by more than her misuse of a pickaxe, and leaves the mine with the dignity of an agitated child.

Hrefna doesn’t seem surprised to see her.

“Mama used to send Derkeethus up a lot too,” she says. She looks a bit... wiggly. Mahariel narrows her eyes in focus to make the little girl stop wiggling. It doesn’t help much.

“Derkeethus? Is that the man who—” _Who didn’t come back._

Hrefna nods. “Mama said he got restless underground and she’d send him to check on me. He took me fishing a lot. I miss him.”

Mahariel turns away as quick as she can, vomits into a bush and just surrenders to the shudders of her aching body. She thinks she remembers when someone called Carver went missing, someone very dear to her.

_“We’ve been down here for weeks now, he can’t have made it.”_

_“You don’t know the strength of my clan.”_

_“He’s not your clan.”_

_“The hell he’s not.”_

But maybe that wasn’t real. Maybe when she hit her head... maybe the fever... maybe this is all some awful dream. It’s hard to tell anymore.

Maybe it doesn’t matter.

She drags the back of her sleeve across her face, trying to soak up the fever sweat and hoping against logic that the sickness will go with it. She slips her bow around her shoulder and grabs a quiver full of arrows. “Do you remember where he went, Hrefna?”

“I think he said he was going to the falls. Up there,” the little girl says, pointing to the tall waterfall by the main road. Only twice as tall as the Redcliffe Windmill. Great. Really.

“Tell the others I’ll be back soon,” Mahariel says, hand on Hrefna’s hair the way she used to ruffle through Kieran’s. Or the way she thinks she did.

_Fuck._


	4. Interim II: Rescue of the Dragon-Man

If only his mother were here.

“Derkeethus,” she would surely say. “How many times, fool child? How many times do we have to go through this before you learn your lesson? You can’t just go scrounging around in caves and holes and animal dens! How many times do I have to tell you?”

 _Well, Mama,_ he says to himself. _You were right. You told me so._

He’s honestly not all that surprised that this happened; this sort of thing was bound to happen to him eventually. Although, he did expect a quicker death.

Falling into a pit, perhaps.

Eaten by those nasty giant spiders.

Squashed by a collapsing tunnel.

But no. No, he has to wander into a cave full of these damned falmer and get locked in a hole in the ground. For fuck’s sake, they throw down rotten fish for him to eat.

There’s a thud high above him. His creepy captors must be up to something. The thought makes him shiver—it doesn’t help that it’s so cold down here.

There’s another thud and a shadow passes over. By the time he looks up though, whatever it is, it’s gone. And no rotten fish have plopped into the water at his feet. Not lunch time then.

He sits down on the driest patch of stone. Not much for it, really, but at least it isn’t covered in filth like the puddle around him. Of all of it—the falmer, the cold, the fear—that’s got to be the worst thing about it, the filth. This place smells worse than the sulphur spewing out of the wastes by the mine.

There’s a heavy scrape—the sound of the only door into and out of his pathetic little prison. He stands up and readies himself, much as he can, anyway. _Maybe this time,_ he thinks. _This time I can fight my way out._ It’s been a poor plan from the start and it’s only gotten poorer the longer he’s been down here, slowly wasting away to nothing. He’s not even sure how long it’s been. Days? Weeks? There’s no measure of time, no light, or weather, or anything. He just knows he’s hungry and thirsty and tired. Still, he readies himself for what might be his last chance.

And then a dunmer practically falls down the stairs and collapses at his feet.

He pulls up right before his fist connects with the back of her head. _What..._

He can hear her laboured breathing easy, but her voice is very soft. “Are you... Are you Derkeethus?”

Did they send someone after him? “Yes,” he says. “Yes! I am!”

She looks up at him, still on her knees in the water, and when he sees her face, his hope for rescue flounders. She’s pale, clammy, her eyes are unfocused. He knows that look: she’s got the Rot. Common enough for hunters passing through here, what with all those nasty skeevers.

She tries to focus on him; he can see the effort it takes to keep her head up and her eyes open. “Are you a dragon-man?”

Then she faints.

...

Dragging an unconscious woman through a cave while fighting off a few crazed falmer is not the hardest thing he’s ever done, but it sure as fucking hell is near the top of that list.

Once he’s out though, it’s not so bad.

He’s never been so grateful for the fresh, cool air of Eastmarch. He allows himself a moment to rest, adjusting the dunmer woman carefully on the ground beside him. She’s still got a strong pulse, still breathing fine, just not waking up. He can see the smoke from Annekke’s chimney rising between the few scattered pines on the edge of the wastes.

 _I’m free,_ he thinks, breathing deep as his lungs will allow and looking back down at the woman on the ground. _Thank you, I’m free._

First thing’s first, he’s got to get her back. Got to wake her up. Got to make sure the Rot doesn’t shrivel up her brain and kill her. But when all that’s done, he’s going to eat three whole bowls of rabbit stew. Maybe four.


	5. Darkwater pt I

_Gods, why are there always dragons? Dragons in the Deep Roads. Dragons in the Wilds. Dragons bearing witness to her almost-execution, dragons plaguing her dreams with knowing laughter, and now dragons in caves awaiting rescue._

_Mahariel is so bloody sick of dragons._

_“I knew your father, you know,” says the dragon. “You get all this stubbornness from him, I think.”_

_“Oh, I dunno,” Mahariel says, fighting off the sickness in her body for the sake of her pride. “I’m starting to think it’s just part of being elvhen. Your influence, maybe.”_

_“Figured it out, have you? It certainly took you longer than I expected,” the dragon says before melting into a woman._

_“I did get hit in the head,” she pouts, bringing her fingertips gingerly to her bruise, still as mottled and purple as it was the first time she saw it in the mirror in Whiterun. “Have to account for that.”_

_The dragon-woman tosses her head back and laughs, her hair slipping behind her shoulders. “Making excuses now? That’s so unlike you, child.”_

_Much as Mahariel is ever enjoying their witty back and forth, she’s a breath away from puking again. “Why am I here, Flemeth?”_

_“Why, you were eaten by a spider, of course! How else does anyone get anywhere these days?”_

_Mahariel rubs her forehead with the heel of her hand._ Always so bloody cryptic, _she thinks._

_“Alright, fine. Then will you take me back?”_

_“No,” Flemeth says flatly. “It is beyond me, even were I willing.”_

Deep breaths, _she tells herself._ You already tried killing her; look how that turned out. _“How do I go back?”_

_Flemeth regards her with something between amusement and admiration, clasping her hands behind her back and circling Mahariel like a bird of prey. Like a dragon, perhaps._

_“Do you remember why I saved you all those years ago? Why I plucked you from the top of that tower in Ostagar?”_

_“Someone had to save the world, you said. And you seemed awfully low on options at the time.” Mahariel’s hands are beginning to shake—her efforts to ignore the fever in her skin are coming to nothing._

_“I have lived a very long time, child. And in that time, I have lived many lives. But the soul of a woman is not quite so malleable as most would have us think—some things are always constant, always seem to find us because we never really can be someone we’re not. Do you understand?”_

_Mahariel takes a deep, shuddering breath. She is definitely going to vomit again. The ground is shaking beneath her and her bones are aching. “No,” she says. “I don’t. What’s this got to do with me getting home?”_

_Flemeth straightens her shoulder and the tone of her voice goes all business. “I’ll strike a deal with you,” she says._

_“I thought desire demons had that market cornered,” Mahariel mutters, but Flemeth ignores her and continues._

_“There’s something here that must be done and you’re going to do it. Then_ _you can go home, if that is still what you want.”_

_“Fine,” she says quickly. She is tired and she is sick and she is angry. Whatever it is that Flemeth wants—a spell book, a heap of slain enemies, the blood a hundred innocents, it doesn’t matter. Mahariel will do anything to go home. She has already done so many things._

_“So quick to agree?”_

_“You knew I would, not that I have much choice,” she spits. Flemeth nods, acknowledging the truth of it—this is not really a negotiation, so much as it is a briefing. “So what do I have to do?”_

_“It will be... quite obvious,” Flemeth says._

...

Something’s scraping against her. Her skin stings and there’s such a throbbing pain behind her eyes that she thinks her brain will leak out through her ears. _Just make it quicker than this,_ she thinks.

And there’s this _irritating_ mumbling somewhere above her.

_...her. What... in a hole, anyway... good fishing..._

_Shut up,_ she begs. _I have a headache._

 _What did she say? Did she say something?_ More mumbling.

Something slick glides across her face and she thinks of camping by the river in the Bannorn.

_Get that off my face, Alistair!_

“She said something else! What’d she say?”

“Stop touching me with that fish, dammit!” She tries to bat it away with her hands, but she can’t move. She feels so heavy.

“Get Derkeethus,” someone says. “Tell him she’s coming around.”

 _Dragon-man. He’s the dragon-man,_ she remembers. “Dragon-man.”

“And someone crush me up some more nirn root; sounds like she’s still hallucinating.”

...

Elgar’nan fuck himself, the sun is too bright. Even through the canvas of the tent, she’s near blinded by it. She tries to cover her eyes with her hand and sit up; it doesn’t go well. Gods, she’s going to vomit again.

Something rustles next to her and there are hands at her shoulders, propping her up and moving her hair away from her face, wiping away the sweat with a wet rag. “You’re awake.”

When she looks over, she thinks she’s lost her mind. All these years of impossible things and she’s finally broke: he’s a lizard. _He’s a lizard man. He’s the..._

“You,” she starts, barely able to raise her voice above a raspy whisper. “You’re Derkeethus. You’re the—”

“Please,” he says quickly, the roughness of his voice a perfect complement to that of his skin. “Please don’t call me dragon-man again. I can’t tell if you’re racially insensitive or just really stupid.”

She lurches forward and he shoves a bucket under her face, saving them from most of the mess she makes. “Stupid,” she manages, when it’s safe to talk again. “Really, really stupid.”

He removes the bucket and dips the rag back into a bowl of water to wash her face. “I figured,” he says. She thinks he is smiling. “Kinda gives off that impression when you charge into a falmer den with the Rot in full swing.”

Rot? Falmer?

“I didn’t catch a word of that,” she tells him. He chuckles. She tries to lift her hands to take the rag— _can wipe my own face,_ she thinks defensively—but it turns out, she can’t. There’s not an ounce of strength in her and she realizes she’s not even sitting up on her own, but leaning against one of his arms. His green, sandpapery arms.

“Not to, ah, be ‘racially insensitive,’” she begins, knowing she’s about to be exactly that. “But what the hell are you?”

“A dunmer who doesn’t know what Argonians look like? That’s new.”

“I’m not a dunmer,” she tries to explain, but she realizes that it’s far too complicated and she’s too tired and he likely won’t believe her anyway. “I mean, I’m not all that educated on dunmer... stuff.”

“Yes, the others have told me as much.” He turns to the side to pick up a bottle of something, glancing sideways at her as he speaks. “And a bit more.”

Oh, fuck. Just what she needs: another person to think she’s as crazy as... _well, as crazy as a certain witch,_ she thinks with a bit of childish satisfaction.

“Alright, let’s just get the basics then,” she says. May as well get this out of the way while she’s stuck in bed—well, bedroll slash pile of furs. “I’m not from around here. No, you’ve never heard of the place I’m from. This isn’t my natural hair color. Did I faint in there? In that cave? I don’t usually do that; I’m actually quite competent in combat although I am, as you so astutely observed, really stupid on a semi-regular basis.”

“That was a good speech. I’m guessing you give it often,” he says, and this time she’s sure that’s a grin. “Anything else I should know?”

“I love dogs.”

...

“The Rot,” as they call it, is far worse than any illness Mahariel ever picked up in Thedas (save, of course, the Blight). It’s three more days before she’s well enough to do any work.

Oh, she asks for an axe, of course, but Tormir won’t budge. A mother through and through, Tormir will hardly let her out of bed, let alone up and about chopping wood or mining ore or laying traps. “You’re just going to make it worse,” she chides. “Just stay in bed and rest.”

“You sound just like Anders,” Mahariel complains, though that means nothing to Tormir.

Hrefna actually enjoys playing nurse, however, and Mahariel’s glad to provide some entertainment if nothing else. Her heart feels like it’s falling out of her chest though, when Hrefna’s spooning her some hot soup and says “You know, you were asleep for almost a week.”

How many days is it now? How long are they going to have to wait for her to come home? How long ‘til they give up?

 _They’d never give up on me,_ she chastises herself, very nearly actually wagging her finger. _Never. Never._

Still, it’s the greatest relief when she can get back to work, even if it is just picking vegetables.

“You seem anxious.” Derkeethus crouches down beside her, resting his arms on his knees.

“That’s one word, I guess. _Anxious._ I’m restless. I can’t stand sitting around like this, doing nothing.” She jerks a carrot out of the earth and dirt sprinkles onto her feet. She flings the carrot into a basket and lets out a heavy breath, surrendering to the overwhelming need to just say it out loud. “I’m homesick. I miss my family.”

Derkeethus joins her in pulling carrots and tosses a few into her basket as he speaks. “I know a sure cure for one of those things,” he says.

“Oh, really?” Her voice is dull, evidence of her depression. She’s getting angrier with herself by the day. Flemeth said she’d know what she was supposed to do, but here she is, still at the mine, picking carrots, not a step closer to home.

He reaches behind him and passes her a bow. “I’ve been craving rabbit stew.”

Her eyes widen and a grin spreads across her face. “Tormir would never go for that,” she warns him. “Says I’m still supposed to be resting.”

“Better to ask forgiveness with a sack of fresh meat,” he says with a shrug. “Besides, I’ll be along to make sure you don’t faint again.”

“Oh, brave soul you are, huh?” She laughs and takes the bow from him. “I don’t need a protector, you know.”

“Everyone needs someone,” he says, standing and shouldering his own bow. “And I need rabbit stew; Sondas is not half so good as he thinks at preparing slaughterfish.”

...

Flemeth doesn’t return and there are no ‘quite obvious’ signs from the sky pointing her toward any grand and horrible task.

Two weeks pass and thoughts of going to Riften for answers fall away; what use would it be? Even could she learn how she got here, where she was before all this nonsense, she knows Flemeth well enough to know that it would make little difference. There’s no bargaining with that one, not really. Still, she isn’t sure what makes her decide to stay at Darkwater. The whole of an unknown continent before her, brimming with things to explore and experience, her way home, too, somewhere out there waiting. And here she stays at Darkwater Mine.

Derkeethus stays close, either in concern for her slowly improving health or grateful obligation for her botched rescue mission. She isn’t quite sure, but she isn’t complaining. Something about his foreignness is more comforting than all the half-familiar things this land has to offer. She doesn’t look at him and see anything missed and missing—not like playing with Hrefna and missing Kieran, not like eating by the fire and grinning at Alistair’s half-remembered jokes, not like watching Tormir doting on her daughter and wondering if Morrigan knows what Flemeth’s got up to now. No, she can look at Derkeethus—scales and horns and tail and all—and see _him_ , as strange and different and unknown as he is to her.

It’s also nice to have a hunting partner with a decent sense of humour. Usually.

“You want to what?” He’s so surprised—although she can’t imagine why—that he forgets himself, voice suddenly loud enough to alert their prey and the deer goes bounding away. She shoots, once, twice, but only manages to lose her arrows among the heather. _Well shit._

Game gone, she stands up and dusts off her clothes. “I want to go get those bandits,” she says again. “I heard Annekke talking about them last night with Verner but you know how he is.”

Derkeethus laughs. “No way he’ll let her go off for something like that; he’d probably die of worry and then who’d pester Ulfric for supplies? Sondas? _Me_?”

“Exactly,” she says, hopeful. “So I was thinking we’d just go deal with them; it’d make the roads safer, we’d have more trade flowing through, and—”

“Wait,” he says, shaking his head. “What do you mean ‘deal with them’? You mean kill them?”

She stows her bow on her back—no saving their hunt today, not with the sun nearly set and all the game scared off from their chatting. “Well, D, in my experience, there’s not usually lots of alternatives. Unless you want to try sleeping with them. That did work for me, but just the one time.”

“I just—wait, really?”

She nods.

“You... you have to tell me that story later.”

She grins. “It involves a devilishly handsome assassin.”

He looks at her like he isn’t sure if he should believe her; she’s quite used to that look. “Regardless,” he says, shaking off the curiosity. “I don’t like the idea of just going in and murdering people.”

“Murdering murderers,” she corrects. Plenty of those absent traders and caravaneers and even farmers had died fighting the bastards off for their tiny bits of livelihood.

“Still,” he says, pausing for thought as they begin their walk back to camp. They’d set up less than a day’s hike from the mine; it was a nice thought—to get away for the night, to have a few hours reprieve from Tormir’s fussing and Hrefna’s questions and Sondas’ idea of roasted fish (it seemed the gods are out to get her, though, for there’d been enough for them both rolled up in her pack). Derkeethus lets out a heavy breath and shakes his head. “And just the two of us? We don’t even know how many there are, or what kinds of defences they have. It’s reckless.”

Her hope shrivels. He’s adventurous, sure, but if ever he was ‘reckless,’ it seems his week-long stay in a falmer den had cured him of that. She’s not quite ready to give it up yet, though. “Come on, D. It’ll be fine. We’ll do some scouting beforehand, go in quiet, and—”

“And kill people.”

“Yes. Kill people. Kill people who are hurting other people, who are hurting Verner and Annekke by stopping up the roads, who are, by extension, hurting all of us.”

“I’m not saying they aren’t bad people; I’m just saying I don’t want to sneak up behind someone and stab them to death. It’d be different if they came to our home and hurt us; it’d be self-defence, but this is...” He sits down on the ground by their fire, still glowing as they’d left it, and stares into it for a moment. “No, I don’t want to do it.”

She huffs as she tosses her bow and quiver inside their tent, then sits down beside him. This is exactly the kind of crap Nathaniel always gave her before a risky run. Sometimes she wishes everyone could just be like Oghren—roaring drunk and ready for whatever the world throws at them, the more outrageous, the better.

“Derk, you’re being ridiculous,” she starts, but he cuts her off with a hiss.

“No, I’m being smart.”

She rolls her eyes and unwraps their dinner— _no deer, oh no, thanks a lot for that, D; we get to eat more of Sondas’ slaughterfish._ “We’re going,” she decides. “We can stop by and restock at Darkwater tomorrow and then we’ll—”

“I’m _not_ going, Mahariel.” He’s holding his fish halfway to his mouth and it’d be almost funny if he didn’t look so mad.

“Yes, we are,” she says firmly. Gods, this is just like that time Anders didn’t want her going into that creepy mine; of course, that ended up going very poorly for her but still. The point is, the job had to be done and there’s no time to be wasted arguing about it. Not then and not now.

Derkeethus is evidently not having the same thoughts. “Last I checked, Verner’s the boss. So unless you’ve bought the mine and plan on seriously increasing my pay, I don’t work for you.”

 “I don’t know why you’re being so damned difficult,” she says, her volume rising to ‘Warden-Commander’ level.

“And _I_ don’t know why _you’re_ acting like I’m your damned subordinate,” he spits. “For a dunmer who doesn’t know shit about her people’s history, you’ve sure got ‘bossing the Argonian’ down perfectly.”

“I’m not bossing you,” she yells, wholly giving up on her fish. She didn’t really want it anyway. “I’m just telling you what we’re going to do—”

“That’s the _definition_ of ‘bossing,’ Mahariel!” He’s yelling now too. At this rate, that blasted giant’s going to waltz all the way across the hot springs to squash them for some peace and quiet.

“You—” She’s so angry at being outright disobeyed like this that she can’t manage much more than a grunt. Even when her Wardens gave her lip, they’d never just refused to follow orders; they trusted her! “You’re impossible,” she finally manages, turning on her heel and stomping into the tent. If she could slam the flap shut behind her she would.

She hears Derkeethus mutter—something about her being a stubborn grey-skinned fool—followed by the sound of his fading footsteps.

 _Damn him,_ she thinks, already a bit worried but too mad to look outside to see where he’s going and certainly too mad to admit she’s worried in the first place. She huddles up in her bedroll and childishly pushes his toward the other end of the tent; there’s hardly even room in here for two and he probably won’t even notice she moved it but still, it’s satisfying in the way most immature acts of passive-aggression are.

He does come back, not even a full hour later, but she’s turned away from the tent-flap, lying in her bedroll like she’s sleeping. She doubts he believes she’s really asleep but she doesn’t say anything and he doesn’t either and when he lies down, it seems like he makes just as much effort as she does to prevent any accidental touching.

...

In the morning—if it can even rightfully be called morning so long before the sunrise—she quickly and quietly shoulders her bow and all but a few of their remaining arrows. If he won’t help, she’ll just do it herself.

Without bothering to go through Darkwater for extra supplies (a decision made partly out of annoyance and mostly out of impatience), she cuts down on the time it takes to get to the bandits’ hideout. The sun has just come over the horizon when she finds the entrance. They’re set up in an old mine—it’s likely that most of the tunnels have already been closed off and there’s little in the way of actual defence outside.

“I told you so, D,” she says under her breath. _This’ll be easy. I don’t even need him._

From her place in the bushes, she easily dispatches two of them with a couple of quick and well-placed arrows. The last begins making his (rather clumsy) way toward her and she shoots into the target set up behind him; he turns toward the sound and that’s all the extra time she needs to sink a final arrow into the back of his head. After a quick look around to check for back-up, she salvages what arrows she can from the bodies and picks up a few extra from the quivers they’d had. She also allows a moment to lift their purses (likely first lifted from the bodies of their victims) and a rather nice pair of leather gloves for her trouble.

She takes a breath before she heads inside, not quite ready to give up light and fresh air for another solo cave-expedition. And of course, she thinks of her fight with Derk.

When she was still of Clan Sabrae, she never dreamt of giving orders. It wasn’t who she was, certainly wasn’t who she wanted to be. Every Dalish in the world should thank the gods that she wasn’t born a mage; she’d have made an _awful_ Keeper. And anyway, she can’t imagine Junar or Feneral or Maren ever just following her orders. Even the thought of it—her orders—in that context is just too strange to lend thought to. But the world had forced her to lead and people had rallied to her, helped her learn to do it well and expected nothing less.

She’s been a leader for so long, it doesn’t seem to matter that she’d never wanted to be one in the first place. But there’s no darkspawn horde here, no Archdemon, no Blight. She’s not a Warden, let alone a Commander. _I... don’t have to be any of those things here._

She shakes her head—no time for this now—and gives her feet a little shake to get herself battle-loose again. Introspection isn’t good for the muscles, she’s learned.

Inside the cave, her biggest complaint is the clammy air. The cold, she’s mostly used to; it’s the _wet_ that’s the problem. The bandits don’t even number that many, maybe ten, twelve at most. They’re more like a little gang—a grubby little gang operating from a bloody hole in the wall and preying on defenceless travellers. One by one (sometimes two) she takes them out and with each shot, silently thanks Junar for all those lessons with the bow. She’s a hot hand with her knives but nothing quite beats the quick-and-easy of a bow shot from the shadows. All in all, it’s a rather successful venture: she’s killed the bastards and picked up over 200 in gold coins and some nice equipment too. Hell, she even found a little wooden practice sword that she thinks would be great for Hfrena, assuming she can talk Tormir into it. And of course she pocketed the gem she’d found, thinking of Derkeethus. _Started grousing around in caves when I was little,_ he’d explained. _Always looking for diamonds and rubies to take home to my mother. Not that I ever found any._

She sighs. He was right. Damn if she wants to admit it, but he was right. She’s just gotten so used to command, to her relationships being filtered through ranks and objectives and obedience. They’re her friends, sure, her family even, but they all—every single one—started out as soldiers. It’s no wonder she doesn’t quite know how to work _with_ people. She has a hard enough time of it with Nathaniel and she’s had years to practice with him.

_I’m going to have to fucking apologize, aren’t I? Damn._

There are footsteps in the tunnel behind her. _Shit._ She must’ve missed one. She jerks around behind a wall, readying her bow for a last shot, but suddenly there’s a metallic clang and her ankle feels like it’s been chopped off and she falls awkwardly to the floor. She can’t help the yelp of pain, is almost so distracted by it that she doesn’t realize she’s given away her position. There’s another set of footsteps now, coming quickly from the other direction. _Shit. Shit, shit, shit._ The trap around her foot wouldn’t normally cause permanent damage—in Thedas, she’d had a similar accident, years before the Blight, and only had a scar for her trouble. But if she doesn’t pull herself loose quickly, a hurt leg will be the least of her problems.

She isn’t quick enough.

“Well, well, we have a visitor, eh?” A large man— _very, very large,_ she notes—looms over her. “You kill all my men yourself, dearie? Just one little grey-skin? I’m almost impressed.” She yanks her knife out of the sheath at her hip but he knocks it away. She can’t get at her bow, useless as it would be at the moment, and she can’t get up. _Shit,_ she thinks again and she almost laughs out loud at the absurdity of this whole blighted situation: dying in a cave in a land she doesn’t know waiting for Flemeth to _poof_ her back home in exchange for some stupid favour. _Nathaniel,_ she silently calls, knowing that no one is coming. _This is when you save me._

The man leans down and wraps one hand around her ankle, just above the teeth of the trap. She can’t stop the stream of curses that come roaring from her mouth. He does, though; he wraps his other hand around her throat and practically lifts her off the ground. She grabs at the hand ‘round her neck but it’s useless. She thinks she hears a familiar voice calling her name—one of her Wardens? Maybe if she dies here, she’ll wake up at home; _might be worth a try, actually_ , she thinks. But then again, maybe it’s just the pounding of her blood behind her eyes.

All of a sudden, she’s fallen to the ground again ( _fuck it all to hell, that hurt_ ) and the pressure on her throat is gone. The man lies dead in front of her, arrow sticking out of his ear. _Good shot,_ she can’t help but think. Although, if she could move, she’d be tempted to kick the dead bastard in the head too, just to be sure.

“Are you alright?” Derkeethus bends down over her and starts pulling the trap’s release.

“What— _ow, fucking shit, ow_!”

“Sorry!” He winces and jerks his hands away. After a minute, most of which she spends cursing and taking deep breaths, he returns to his task, a bit more gently.

“What are you doing here?” She hates herself for even asking. She should’ve expected this—too many good people have followed her into absolute shit storms.

“I came to help you.” She’s surprised to find no trace of anger in his voice.

She looks away from him. Gods damn her pride. “I don’t need—”

“Everyone needs someone,” he says, finally freeing her from the trap. He helps her up, even allows her to salvage what little of her dignity is left by staying with her slow pace as she limps back to the entrance.

“Thank you, D,” she finally says, once they’re out in the fresh air again.

He nods acknowledgement, but his face now carries the anger she was expecting. This time, it is not the tone but the nature of his words that surprises her. “You shouldn’t have come without me.”

“You said you weren’t going to come!”

“I wasn’t and I wouldn’t have. You shouldn’t have either.”

She starts to fight back—it may not have gone according to plan, but she still thinks this was the right move—but he cuts her off. “You could have gotten hurt—well, _more_ hurt,” he amends, glancing down at her leg. “No one knew where you were; we were worried!”

After all these years, she still has moments like this one—Nathaniel or Alistair or Carver or Morrigan chastising her for doing something stupid and it always turns out to be this: affection. The Sabrae Clan was always affectionate; she has never in her life felt unloved. But she wonders when exactly she became a person who needed so much reminding, a person who needed to be told that she was more than a war hero, more than a dishonourably discharged commander, more than a Warden or a thief or a smuggler. When did she forget those things? When did she forget that she could be cared for? Nurtured? Loved?

_Damn._

“Just so we’re clear,” he says, looping his arm around her waist to help support her weight. “I’m not here because you’re my boss; I’m here because you’re my friend.”

She can only nod. Somewhere—about the same time she forgot she was a person, she supposes—she forgot how to say _I love you too_.

They limp along the road in silence until Mahariel finally manages “I’m sorry.” The biggest problem is that she doesn’t know how to explain. “And... and I’m sorry about last night. I just—”

“It’s ok,” he says, and she can see the slight curve of a smile. “You did warn me that you were stupid.”

She laughs and prods him in the ribs. He instinctively jerks away and she cries out when her weight falls on her hurt leg. Then she laughs a bit more at the look of concerned horror on his face. It has been a very long time since Mahariel made a friend.


	6. Darkwater pt II

A week after Mahariel’s bandit-raiding escapade, a small caravan comes through Darkwater. She’s not graceful about her success.

“Told you so, D,” she says, elbowing him in the ribs as the carriage pulls to a stop by the house.

Derkeethus just rolls his eyes.

The two of them still haven’t come to any agreement about their conflicting moral alignments, but no one’s complaining about the prospect of easier supply runs, more trade, and a noticeable decrease in the amount of dead travellers along the road.

The caravan numbers five: a merchant and his wife, the carriage driver, an Imperial guard, and a man in a robe. She watches each of them carefully, not with suspicion borne of any reason, but because it’s what she’s learned to do over the years.

The carriage driver is such an unassuming man that she thinks she ought to watch him the closest. She almost laughs out loud at herself, already so defensive. She doesn’t even know what she’s got to defend against.

The soldier is, unsurprisingly, staring hard at the Eastmarch guards, patrolling the perimeter in their stormcloack uniforms. Tormir had made a bit of effort to get Mahariel up to speed on the war—thing is, Mahariel just doesn’t care. It’s not her fight, not her home, not her people. And if it’s not her people, it is not her problem. She learned that about herself long ago.

The merchant and his wife dismount the carriage with the air of false-nobility—a rung above the poorest farmer and still stupid enough to believe real nobles would invite them to dine at fancy tables. It so reminds her of Orlais, she doesn’t know if she wants to laugh or vomit. She smiles sweet as sickness at them when they pass by her on their way to the house. It’s the way they look at her, down their noses, lips turned down like she smells like trash. Names might be different here—Dunmer, Nord, Argonian—but the way shemlen look at knife-ears, seems that hasn’t changed.

The man in the robe, she isn’t sure about; he doesn’t seem to be doing anything much other than standing around with a pouting lip. She doesn’t think he’s a priest, but he doesn’t carry himself like the son of the low-born ‘nobles’ he’s with.

She’s about to walk over to one of them—this curiosity, this desire to meet new people, she’s not sure when that became part of her—but Annekke calls her toward the house.

“Mahariel,” she shouts, over the din of the smelter and the whines of the horses. “I want you to have a look through some of this, see if there’s anything here you need.”

...

They stock up on new tools, dried foods, a couple of nicer hunting bows, and lots of little coloured bottles of... something. It most definitely is not alcohol, so Mahariel doesn’t ask. She does, however, think these haughty merchants charge far too much for some of their goods, but Annekke dismisses her concerns when the traders aren’t willing to negotiate. The miners need the supplies and the merchants are quite aware of that.

The caravan decides to stay the night before going on their way. Annekke and Verner offer the warmth and relative cleanliness of their home (for the sake of hospitality or future favour, Mahariel isn’t sure) and that’s when Mahariel hears something very interesting.

“Guard, by our door,” says the merchant. “Mage, by the cart.”

 _Well that explains the robes,_ Mahariel thinks. _What was it Anders said? Mages always wear robes unless they’re naked?_ The guard just gives a pert nod and marches to her new post. The mage, on the other hand, stands at full attention with a salute to his temple. “Aye, Your Highnesses. I shall guard this most important of duties with my very life. It is an honor to have my talents used for so noble a purpose as keeping watch on a cart.”

“Watch your tongue, Imperial,” the merchant says, cheeks puffed and reddened with annoyance. “I didn’t pay you to stand around and grouse like a court fool.”

“And what a wasted opportunity _that_ was,” the mage mutters. It’s not so loud that his employer can hear it, but Mahariel covers a snort of laughter with her hand. Seems angry mages and sarcasm go together like Wardens and booze.

At the sound of her muffled laughter, the mage glances over at her; it’s a quick, cursory look, more out of reflex than anything else. She doubts he even really sees her, past her ears and her skin and her proximity to an equally amused Argonian. He just as quickly looks away, attention now focused on climbing into the back of the cart for a night’s rest.

She shrugs and goes back to her own place at the fire, sitting near Hrefna and Sondas at her tent.

“Where are they heading anyway?” Mahariel asks, taking a few pieces of the rabbit being passed around the fire.

“Riften, they said,” Tormir tells her, placing a few pieces of roasted meat on Hrefna’s little plate. “Been travelling all the way from Solitude.”

At the mention of Riften, Mahariel stiffens a bit. It’s been nagging at her for a while now, but especially these last few days: she doesn’t know why she hasn’t left this place yet. Flemeth hadn’t given her any clues, any idea where to start. Seems like one place is really just as good as another, or rather, just as likely to be a dead-end.

Still, just sitting here ‘round the fire, eating roasted rabbit with company she’s beginning to enjoy—it feels like a betrayal. She should be doing more, something, anything to get home, not having fireside chats about pickaxes and teaching a little girl to hold a wooden sword.

“What, thinking of becoming a travelling merchant, Mahariel?” Sondas asks. “I don’t think you have the people skills for it, really.”

She laughs. “You’re right about that,” she agrees. She’s not so good at dealing with people... unless she’s ‘dealing’ with them by employing violence. Or thievery. Or rank and file. She has a very particular skill set almost wholly devoted to stealing, hunting, and Grey Wardening.

“That reminds me,” Sondas says. “Unless the Master Plan was to sleep in a fur pile outside a mine, I’ve been wondering where you were headed when you found your way here.”

As she dips her head over her plate, she sees Derk looking closely at her from across the fire. “Oh you know,” she says, staring far too hard at a carrot. “Just wandering.”

...

When everyone has gone to bed, Mahariel sneaks out of her tent. These eyes aren’t like her old eyes—she can’t see nearly as well in the dark, but she has to make do without a light. She does _not_ want to get caught. The mage is sleeping well, it seems, with one of his legs hanging out the back of the wagon. The driver is bundled up on the seat and snoring. She doesn’t dare try to get into Annekke’s house to take the money back directly, but surely these people would leave a bit extra in their well-guarded cart.

There are plenty of bags and packs and boxes strapped to the sides and she is as honest as a thief can be—she only takes enough coin and goods to make up for the unfair prices.

Well, and she finds a pretty ruby that she just can’t put back down; she can give it to Derk later, she decides (although it may be best not to tell him where she got it). But other than that, she’s as honest as a well-meaning thief can be.

When she’s gotten what she needs, and is digging through one of the sacks, more out of nosiness than anything else, she finds a very curious stone. Something about it is so familiar...

It’s so bright, as though it emits a light all its own rather than reflects the light of the moons. She turns it over in her hands; it’s so warm, and the feel of it—humming, almost pulsing like a heartbeat. When she closes her eyes, she feels as though she is holding a tiny life in her hands. _A stone, a crystal, with life inside..._

She almost drops it on the ground. _A phylactery?_ And then she jerks her head around, staring at the leg of the sleeping mage. _Is this his? Does he know it’s here?_

The indecision lasts only a second. He may realize she’s stealing. He may turn her in, try to hurt her, have her jailed or beaten or worse. But she thinks of Anders and how she misses him and if she’s betraying them all by not coming home, she can at least do this for him.

She cradles the crystal in her hand and pulls up one of the flaps at the back of the wagon. With one quick look around, she hops inside and covers the mage’s mouth with her hand before trying, gently, to wake him.

He is, as she’d expected, quite surprised by her intrusion and he tries to knock her hand away.

“No, shh! Shh! I’m not trying to hurt you,” she promises. “Just stay quiet, please.”

He looks at her warily—not that she blames him—and she takes her hand away slowly. He sits up, and without his leg to keep the canvas flap open, the only sliver of light is gone and they are left in guarded silence and darkness, save the dim glow of the stone in her hand.

“Don’t think I’m defenceless, elf,” he says. “I can fry you in a second.”

Oh, she knows well a mage’s power. He doesn’t need to tell her.

“No, no,” she says. “I want to help.”

“Help? Help with wha—what are you doing with that?” He leans away from her when he sees the glowing crystal in her hand.

“Is this your phylactery?” Mahariel asks, holding it out to him.

“My... Look, I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“No, don’t worry,” she says, trying to make her intentions clear. “I’m not going to do anything to you; I found it in one of their bags. We can destroy it. You can get away.”

She didn’t think it was possible, but his eyes actually get wider. “What _the hell_ are you talking about? Are you cracked?”

This is not the reaction she was expecting.

He shakes his head in disbelief and throws his hands in front of him to keep her at a distance. “Wait. Wait. Were you _stealing_ from the bloody cart?”

Shit. “No! No, I—” But it’s too late and his voice is getting louder.

“You were! You were stealing and now you’re—well, you’re in my bed, aren’t you? Blathering on about... I don’t even know. Get out! Get out of here!”

“Wait,” she says, growing desperate. “Wait, don’t tell—”

“Get out!”

“No, it really isn’t—I didn’t mean... _Shit._ ”

Suddenly the flaps of the wagon are pulled back and the light of the night sky falls in, illuminating her guilty face and the evidence of her crime in her hand. _This is it,_ she thinks. _I’ll be lucky if I’m not killed on the spot._

Staring open-mouthed into the caravan are Derkeethus and the carriage driver.

“What the hell,” the driver yells. “What is going on in here? You’d better not be fooling around with some grey-skin in the back of my wagon, mage!”

The mage, for his part, is quite indignant at the accusation. “What? No! This crazy woman snuck in here and tried to smother me or something! She’s talking nonsense, shoving blasted souls gems at me!”

But thank the gods for Derkeethus. Oh, she’s going to owe him big time. He reaches in and grabs her arm and pulls her out to stand beside him, even throws one of his arms around her shoulders to keep her out of reach of the two (increasingly angry) men. “Sorry! So sorry,” he says, taking the phylactery from her and shoving it into the driver’s hands. “She... she does things like this all the time. Wanders off, says the strangest things. Last night she kept the whole camp up mumbling something about ‘qunari’ in her sleep.” He’s shaking his head and patting her shoulder like she’s a badly behaved child that just won’t learn her lesson.

The mage looks at her strangely, with a bit less anger and a bit more caution. “What the hell is qunari?”

“I dunno,” Derk tells him. “Like you said, she’s just... just _full_ of nonsense. I was supposed to be watching her tonight, you know, and I just—I’m really sorry about all this.”

The driver pulls Derk a little closer to him and lowers his voice— _not enough to keep me from hearing, of course,_ she thinks. _Nobody said I was deaf, blighted lout_. “So, then,” he says uncertainly. “She’s a bit... a bit...?”

“A bit touched,” Derk says, nodding solemnly. If he weren’t saving her ass, she’d kick him in the shin.

The driver’s shoulders slump, defeated. “Well just—just keep her over there,” he finally says.

The mage narrows his eyes and looks back and forth between the three of them. He doesn’t believe a word of it, Mahariel can tell, but he seems to only care that he’s gotten his makeshift bed back since he yanks the flaps shut without another word.

“I will,” Derk assures the driver. “I’ll take care of it.”

The driver isn’t as easily satisfied as the mage, it seems, for he watches Derk lead her all the way back to her tent before he returns to his own bed on the carriage seat.

She hopes this will be the end of it, but of course it isn’t. Derk practically shoves her inside her tent before coming in himself. _As if there’s room in here for this,_ she thinks sullenly.

At first, he doesn’t even speak, just puts his face in his hands and takes a few deep breaths. “Do I even want to know?”

“Probably not,” she tries. It doesn’t work.

“I want to know,” he warns her, giving her a stern look. “ _What_ were you doing?”

“I...” Fen’Harel’s ass, she’s not sure how she’s going to get out of this. How’s she supposed to explain? What if he turns her in to the templars for trying to kidnap the mage? Or for aiding fugitives or something? _Shit,_ she thinks, fear prickling under her skin. _Would D really do that? Would he turn me in?_ She doesn’t know where these people fall on the issue, hasn’t been around long enough to earn the kind of loyalty required to save her from this. _Shit, shit, shit._

He sighs. “Look, it’s not my business what you get up to in bed or who you get up to it with but that guy—”

She squints. “In bed? You thought we were— No! No, it wasn’t...”

He glances to the side, out the tiny opening of the tent. “Can’t say that’s not a relief. Guy tries to accuse you of killing him when you’re caught in his bed? Maybe not the guy you want to be in bed with.”

“I will take that under advisement,” she says, nodding at his wisdom. “That is excellent advice, D. Thank you for—”

“Stop trying to distract me. What the hell was going on?”

 _Alright,_ she tells herself. _Worst case, there are two guards, plus the mage, the driver, and the Imperial soldier in the house. Don’t think Sondas and Tormir will come after me. Might be able to outrun Annekke... Fuck._

She takes a deep breath and then her words come out in a quick, anxious slur. “I was trying to help him escape.”

Derk just looks at her for a second and she holds her breath, waiting to see what he’ll do.

“What?”

Well, he hasn’t yelled for the guards yet. Maybe she can make this work. _Maybe he’s an advocate,_ she thinks hopefully. But she’s not usually that lucky. “The mage,” she says. “I found that phylactery in the wagon and thought it was his and I was going to help him escape.”

He shuts his eyes for a second, clearly taking it in, and then puts one of his hands on hers to calm her nerves. “Ok, _what in the world_ is a... a ‘phylactery’?”

“Don't you know?” Of course, before she’d met Wynne, she'd never known much about Circle Mages. “Those glassy, crystal things—the Circle uses them to keep track of the mages; they’re sort of... made of blood and stuff.”

“Crystal things? Wha—wait. You mean that gem you had in your hand?”

“Yes,” she says.

He sits up just a bit straighter. “Mahariel,” he says, trying to keep his voice calm. It’s like he’s talking to a child; she’d be angry if she weren’t so worried. “That was a soul gem. They’re used for—well for weapons and things. Other things. There’s no blood in them; they aren’t for... what’d you say? Tracking people? They aren’t for that.”

But it had felt so... _alive_. “I don’t understand,” she says.

He folds his hand around hers. “Honestly, I don’t either. We’ll work it out in the morning, alright? Just... just stay away from the wagon. _Please._ ”

...

Someone’s watching out for her, it seems. _Although it certainly isn’t Flemeth,_ she thinks, just in case Flemeth is listening. But there must be someone doing something on her behalf because the wagon leaves early in the morning and neither the mage nor the driver ever mentions the night prior.

After a very lengthy and very nerve-wracking talk with Derkeethus (far away from the ears in camp), Mahariel discovers that there is no Circle in Skyrim. There are no phylacteries, no Templars, no apostates. Just people who use magic and people who don’t. Everyone has an opinion of course, but nobody’s being locked up or stolen away from their families or executed as escaped fugitives. And no one’s being punished for aiding said non-existent fugitive apostates.

She buries her face in her hands and presses her fingertips against the still present bruise on her temple (blasted thing’s never going to go away, it seems). “So, basically,” she finally says. “What you’re telling me is that I got in that man’s bed in the middle of the night and tried to convince him to destroy some sort of... magic weapon rock for his own safety from people who don’t exist.”

Derk just nods, mouth pressed into a tight line that’s definitely either concern for her mental health or amusement that he’s afraid she’ll punch him for showing.

“Lovely. That’s just lovely.” She stands up and grabs a rock off the ground then flings it into a hot spring. “I hate this place,” she says. She thinks she ought to feel the exact opposite. This is what Anders has been fighting for, after all: no Chantry hold, no fear, no chains. And here it is. She’s _living_ in it. And all she wants is to go home. Which she’s not yet figured out how to do. Betrayal upon fucking betrayal.

“What I don’t understand,” Derkeethus says, coming to stand behind her. “Is why you don’t know this. You didn’t know what an Argonian was. You don’t know anything about Dunmer, or the war, or anything. And we don’t know much of anything about _you_.”

She stays silent, staring at the fading ripples in the pool from her little tantrum.

“You have to tell me _something_ , Mahariel,” he tries.

“I don’t have to,” she says, not with anger but with weariness. _I don’t have_ _to do_ anything _here. I hate this place._

“No, you don’t. But I wish you would.”

...

Over the next two weeks, Mahariel spends more time wandering around the wastes and the woods and the roads than she does at camp.

Annekke had noticed the extra coin and food slipped among the stores, and Mahariel had seen something—disappointment maybe, or concern—when Annekke had looked her way. So Mahariel had silently slipped her bow on her back and gone on an extended hunting trip.

She’s not been doing much hunting though, not in the traditional sense. It was Daveth, all those years ago at Ostagar, who helped her use her hunter’s talents to get her hands in people’s pockets. At first, she only took the things she needed from people who didn’t need them at all: coin from the purses of nobles, food from the kitchens of Banns, things like that. Then it became favours for the disenfranchised, supplementary supplies for people who deserved better from the world, the occasional gift for the people she loved. By the end of that year—the year of the Blight—she had become the Dark Wolf of Denerim, stealing petty victories over those that she and her people could never really win against in any meaningful way. She’d only ever wanted her clan, only ever wanted to love and protect her family but she’d been shoved into a Hero’s shoes, made to be what Thedas said was good and right.

But she’s not in Thedas anymore. And she doesn’t have to be anything.

Every couple of days, she’s stopped back by the mine, just for a few minutes, to drop off hides or food or supplies or coin, things she’s ‘picked up’ along her way. Each time, Hrefna’s begged her to stay, and Derkeethus too, in his silent way, but she also sees the way some of the others are starting to become wary of her and her... methods.

It’s been four days since she’s last seen them and something in her just wants to stay away this time, but she _happened upon_ a few things that she really wants to give to Hrefna—a doll and some dresses and some sweet, gooey cakes (and Mahariel only ate one of them herself).

Sondas is the only person topside when she makes it to the mine and she’s surprised when he pulls her into a hug—reminds her a bit of Varel, actually.

“Wondering when you were going to wander back,” he says. “Starting to worry.”

“It’s only been a few days,” she says, waving him off. “Besides, what’s there to worry about? Me getting hurt by big, scary monsters?”

“More like big, scary monsters getting hurt by you,” he says. “Oh! I dug something up the other day, wanted to... If I can find it...” He digs into his pockets, pats at his clothes.

Before he finds whatever he’s looking for though, Hrefna’s calling Mahariel’s name, running full speed from the entrance of the mine. Mahariel drops her sack of goodies and scoops the little girl up.

“I missed you,” Hrefna tells her.

“I missed you too, da’len,” she says. “And I brought you some presents!”

She sets Hrefna back on her feet. While she’s digging through her gifts, the others come up from the mine.

“Mahariel,” Derk says, putting a hand on her shoulder. “You’re back.”

“Just for a bit,” she says, trying to ignore the look he gives her when she says it.

“Mama, look!” Hrefna holds one of her new dresses up, holding it against her torso. “It’s green.”

Tormir smiles, but Mahariel sees the hesitance there. “It’s lovely, dear.” She sidles up to Mahariel though, and says a little quieter, “But where did you get all this?”

“A merchant on the road,” she shrugs. Tormir gives her a sideways glance and Mahariel rolls her eyes. “He wasn’t using them,” she says.

Sondas gives her a playful shove. “Why don’t you stay for a bit? Have dinner with us, at least?”

...

This was a bad idea. She’d felt it, down in her gut, when they’d asked her to stay and eat, but as strong as that feeling was how much she’d missed them all, missed this place, her spot by the fire, her tent, her tiny place of sanctuary in this strange land. So she’d hunkered down among them with a plate full of Sondas’ roasted slaughterfish ( _dear gods, I can’t believe I missed this)_.

And she’d not even finished her food when Hrefna jumped up from her seat.

“Oh! I forgot! I got you a present too!” The little girl digs around in her pocket and her hand comes up with a pretty little sapphire.

“Hrefna,” Tormir says, standing from her seat. “Did Sondas give you that?”

“No,” she says, a bit confused and a tiny bit guilty.

“Then how did you get it?”

“I took it from his pocket,” she says. The look on her face is clear enough: she know she’s done something she shouldn’t.

Sondas is sitting awkwardly, unsure of what he can say to resolve the tension. “Well,” he says quietly, leaning over toward Mahariel. “I _was_ going to give it to you, so...”

Tormir takes the gem away. “Why would you do that, Hrefna?”

“He wasn’t using it,” Hrefna whispers.

_Shit._

...

For a while, Tormir doesn’t say anything. In fact, she’s not even the one who starts.

“I was worried this was going to be a problem,” Annekke says, hands propped on her hips. “When that caravan came through, that extra coin in Verner’s pockets... that was you, wasn’t it?”

Mahariel nods. “They cheated you.”

“I agreed to those prices. I invited those people into my home. And you—” She shuts her eyes and lets out a breath, tossing her hands up. “We weren’t blind to what you’ve been doing, where you’ve been getting all these things you’ve brought back, but we certainly pretended to be, didn’t we?”

“And now my daughter’s picked up your thieving,” Tormir says, more vicious than Mahariel’s ever heard her.

“Tormir, I never meant for that. I’m sorry,” Mahariel says, and it’s true. “I’d never do anything to—” _But I did do it, didn’t I? What if it were Kieran?_

“If it’s not one Dumner teaching her to hate her own heritage—”

“Hold on just a minute,” Sondas says, but Tormir’s too angry to pay him any mind, even if she didn’t really mean it.

“Then it’s another one teaching her to steal,” she finishes, throwing up her hands and turning away. She’s silent for a second before she says, quietly, “You’re my friend, Mahariel. I’m glad you came. But I think your next excursion should be a bit longer.”

Derkeethus looks up from his seat at Annekke’s table, where he’s been sitting silent the whole time. “You want her to leave?”

Tormir doesn’t answer.

“Surely that’s not necessary,” Sondas says.

She’s grateful for their defence, but Tormir’s right. She’s been here too long anyway.

“I’ll go,” she says. “I’ve, ah, got places I need to get to.”

“No. No you don’t. You don’t have to go anywhere.” Derk stands up and his chair slides back against the wall with a screech. He stares hard at Tormir’s back. “She doesn’t have to go anywhere.”

“She’s right, D. It’s time for me to go... _somewhere_.”

...

“What about now?”

“No.”

“Now?”

“No.”

“ _Now_?”

“No, Derkeethus.” Mahariel doesn’t stop walking, just pushes ahead, batting tree branches out of her face. “And I don’t understand why you’re here.”

“Yes, you do.” He’s only a step behind her and his spirited tone of voice is like a lance through her chest; she at least has the decency to prevent the branches from whipping around behind her and smacking him in the face.

He’s quiet then, but she can’t relax. He shouldn’t be here; he shouldn’t have left his home.

“What about now?”

“Dread Wolf take you, D, _fine._ One question. One.” He’s been hounding her since they left the mine. Six hours of this. Six hours of _tell me what a Circle is, tell me about phylacteries, what the hell does qunari mean,_ just on and on and on. It’s not that she’s actually mad, not really; it’s just that she has no idea how to explain this. She’s not sure she even wants to try.

He thinks for a moment, trying to decide what he’s most curious about, no doubt. “Alright,” he says finally. “What’s the Dread Wolf?”

 _Nevermind,_ she thinks. _The Dread Wolf take me instead._ “He’s one of the gods of the Dalish,” she begins. “Well, not a god exactly. He’s the trickster, harellan. He’s the reason they don’t walk among the People anymore, or that’s the story, anyway.”

“Um, ok,” he says uncertainly. “I’m gonna circle back to that. What’s the ‘Dalish’?”

“ _I’m_ Dalish. Elvhen. Where I’m from, there are no Dunmer or Bosmer or... whatever else. There’s just elves, Dalish and City Elves, but we’re all elves. And the Dalish, we’re... wanderers, I guess. Sort of. It’s complicated.”

“Not the only complicated thing going on with you.”

She chooses to ignore that.

“So what’s ‘shems,’ then? You say that one a lot, mostly when you’re muttering.”

She takes a deep breath. “You know, I did say _one_ question.” One look at his face says he knows she’s going to humour him anyway. “Shem’len. The quick children. Humans,” she explains. “We call them shems. It’s like... slang.”

“Right, right. Ok. So there’s no Argonians, I’m guessing?”

She laughs at that. She can’t even imagine what would happen if Derk showed up in Thedas. “No,” she says. “There are the elvhen, shems, qunari, durgen’len—”

“Are any of these real words? Are you fucking with me?”

“D, if I was fucking with you, you’d probably know it.”

“Just probably?”

She drops her pack on a fallen log. “This is a good spot to camp,” she says. “Help me make a fire.”


	7. Riften pt I

After a solid twenty minutes of Derkeethus _encouraging_ her to pick a destination other than “that way, I guess,” Mahariel decides she will go to Riften.

It’s the closest city, it has an inn with real beds, and she’s sure there must be some sort of cosmic irony in ending up there despite the last few weeks she’s had.

In the meantime, they camp along the Treva River.

Though Derk assures her it is late spring, the wind gusting across the cool water has Mahariel shivering with cold. She sits by the fire, bundled up in her bedroll, wishing they were both back in their homes.

“You shouldn’t have come,” she tells him, for what must be the thirtieth time today.

“Well, I did,” he says, as he has every time before. He sounds just as chipper as he has all day, wandering through... wherever the hell they are. The woods. He passes her a tin cup, warm from whatever he’s been heating over the fire.

“What’s this?” She’s been sulking all day, hasn’t paid a bit of attention to what he’s been brewing over here. Gods, he could poison her if he wanted; it’d be easy with her attentions so divided and her self-preservation instinct so diminished. She actually has to remind herself that no one in this place has any reason to do such a thing. So far as she knows, at least.

“It’s water,” he tells her, spooning a bit into his own cup. “With honey and lavender. Tormir makes it a lot—good for sore throats and fighting off a chill.”

She sighs at the reminder of the people they’ve left behind and takes a sip. It’s good—soft and subtle and it warms her through. “Thanks.”

“M-hm.” He sits down next to her, although, unlike her, he isn’t wrapped in his sleeping bag like a poorly fitted coat.

The comfort of a warm drink and a warm fire reminds her of all the nights she’s spent bundled in Redcliffe Castle over the years, a safe haven she’d never expected to have in the midst of everything her life had become. “Back home, Alistair used to grind up chocolate and cinnamon and mix it into hot water. Good drink for a cold night.” _And a luxury only available in the Arl’s kitchens._

“Alistair?”

“He’s...” She doesn’t know how to explain anything here. “He’s family.” It’s not quite the right word, not really, but for now it’s close enough to the one she wants. She’s beginning to think this would all be much simpler if these people spoke Qunlat. Now there’s an honest language, ironically enough.

After a few minutes of silent sipping, she looks over at Derkeethus, gazing sleepily into the fire. “You shouldn’t have come,” she says again. “You should go home.”

“Well, I’m not.”

It’s the calm, the damned cheer in his voice—it makes her want to throw her cup at him, hit him square in the head. “And why the hell not?”

“Why do you keep acting like you don’t want me here?”

“I—” She jerks her head around, toward the woods, so he can’t look at her. “I am _not_ doing that.”

“Yes you are. I think you just don’t want to be seen with me.”

“That’s not—” She rushes to correct him, to assure him it’s not that, and knocks her cup over, pouring hot water all over her leg. “ _Shit._ ”

And anyway, he’s ignoring her. He raises his voice an octave, a screechy (and poor) attempt at impersonating her. “I’m Mahariel; I’m the lone black-eyed beauty that wanders through the shadows being broody and mysterious. Having friends throws off my image. Don’t ask me any questions about myself, because I’m far too interesting to—”

“Ass.” His point made, Mahariel shoves him, not quite knocking him over as she’d wanted, but at least he spills his drink too. He only laughs at her.

“You’re so worried about me,” he teases, spooning them both more to drink.

She purses her lips. The last decade or so of her life has given her plenty of reason to worry about the people who insist on staying close to her.

“I don’t know if you noticed, but I’m a big, strong dragon-man and I’m going to be fine,” he says when he hands her a refilled cup. “You don’t have to be the Lonely Hero, so stop being so dramatic.”

Morrigan would like him, she decides. He might be the only man Mahariel’s ever met whose stubborn, sarcastic wit matches her own. Still, she’ll be damned if she admits that.

“So, your tail,” she says slyly, letting the warmth of her second cup seep into her hands.

Her grin is met with a sideways glance.

“I’m just wondering: if you whip around quick enough, think you could knock someone down with it?”

He humours her, puts his fingers on his chin in thought. “Hmm. Why don’t you hold still? We’ll find out.”

...

There have been few times (and less and less as the years wore on) that Mahariel has not been able to make up her mind about something within the first hour of exposure.

Riften is one of those things.

Outside the gate, Derkeethus just stands with his face in his hand as Mahariel tells the shady guard she could run a smoother shake-down operation with both hands behind her back and then insults his mother for having birthed such a stupid child.

Inside the gate, they’re immediately accosted by one of the brutes of the city’s most influential villain. The water is disgusting and emits an awful smell. If the local lower class are to be believed (and they always are), the leadership is wholly incompetent. There is apparently some sort of... _skooma_ issue which Derk has to explain twice (something akin to lyrium, she settles on, with perhaps a touch of Dwarven ale).

There is a deep chasm in this city and all of its citizens are on one side or the other: the rich and powerful or the poor and powerless trapped beneath their feet. It reminds her of Denerim and she hates it. But she loves it too, because it is so easy to tell the good from the bad, so easy to see the black and white and grey of life, so easy to find ways to bring little justices to the big hurts. It’s at least something to focus on, something that isn’t smoke and dreams and dragons.

So, really, by the end of her cursory, self-led tour, she’s not sure whether she wants to hang her hat at the local bar or set the whole damn city on fire ( _that,_ she thinks, a bit guiltily, _might not have been the best choice of words, considering my record_ ).

What is most interesting to her that first day, and what she’s a bit too embarrassed to ask Derkeethus about, is the Argonian at one of the market stalls. He makes jewellery, apparently, and so she has no reason at all to go over. She can remember the last time she made a habit of wearing jewellery, can very vividly remember the pain it caused her too, when a shem had jerked out her earrings and taken a chunk of her ear with them. And only twice has she ever allowed an exception to her resulting rule of “no ornamentation” for the sake of Zevran and Anders. Not that she’d been lucky enough to end up here _with_ those tokens, of course. _Fucking Flemeth and her fucking cryptic godsdamned—_

“Mahariel?”

She jerks to attention, jolted from her ruminations by Derk’s voice. “Right, yes,” she says automatically, nodding her head. “Yes, of course, we can.”

He and the dunmer next to him just look at her for a moment.

“Got it,” she says. “Not what you asked me. Right. Ok. I’m listening now. Sorry.”

Derk shuts his mouth with an audible click and turns back to the dunmer at the stall. “So, uh, now that she’s back in reality, this is Mahariel.”

Oh gods take her screaming from this world, is Derk trying to help her make friends?

“Brand-Shei,” says the dunmer, holding out his hand.

Despite her hesitance (and her burning embarrassment), she takes it. “Mythal enansal.”

When his brows knit together, she realizes her mistake. “Shit,” she says, still absently shaking his hand. “Sorry! You probably don’t know what that means, do you?”

“Guess you could tell by my name I don’t speak much traditional dunmeri,” he says.

“I, ah—I...” _What?_ By now, her hand has stilled (although she doesn’t realize she’s still holding his).

“His name,” Derk supplies. “It’s an Argonian name.”

“Really?” She catches herself, curbs her overly-enthusiastic curiosity, and finally looks down at her hand, pulling it away and shyly shoving it into her pocket. She also ignores Derk’s completely unnecessary chuckle. “How, um—how did that come about?”

...

It seems that, no matter how down she gets, several rounds of beer and a good story can set her right. Such has been her way for a long time now.

It begins with her buying a pint for Brand-Shei, a gesture of goodwill so he will tell his story, but after several hours of pint after pint after pint, it becomes a one-upping contest the likes of which Riften has never seen (and which most of the patrons of the bar show a very boisterous interest in).

In the first round (and by this time they have already passed into the young hours of the morning), Brand-Shei claims ties to a noble house she’s never heard of. A dunmer in the corner scoffs at him, but another cheers him on, pumping her fist in the air. Mahariel tries to convince them all that she did, in fact, not only meet a pack of werewolves but cured them all as well (although she _may_ have neglected to mention the hand she had in the death of a respected elder, hard to say really what with all the drinks). This goes over quite well with the locals until she mentions the Brecilian Forest which, _of bloody course_ , is not in Skyrim. She decides she’s not going to deal with it tonight and tells them that of course it’s not in Skyrim; it’s along the eastern border of Hammerfell and don’t they know their blighted geography? (“Right, right,” says one of the patrons. “Drink’s getting to me, is all.”) Derkeethus finishes up with a tale about wandering into a Falmer den. It’s quite familiar, of course, save the bits where he _wasn’t_ trapped for a week eating rotten fish in a pit. But she has the sportsmanship not to out him for it, though she does elbow him in the ribs at the close.

For round two, Brand-Shei spins a story about having saved one of his many adopted brothers from drowning. Derkeethus only laughs at this (so too, do the Argonian owners of the bar). “Argonians don’t drown,” he says simply. Still, someone near the back of the little crowd salutes Brand-Shei for his good deed, fabricated or not. In response, Derkeethus tells a wildly embellished version of rescuing her from that bandit den (or at least, _she_ doesn’t remember any vampires or rabid wolves or orcs, whatever the hell an orc is). His tale is met not only with cheering but with, in her opinion, wholly unnecessary wolf-whistling. For her turn, Mahariel tells them about the very first time she fought a dragon, at a temple none of them’d ever heard of, and of course not a soul believes her, but she does get a few cheers for her ability to “talk such absolute horse shit with a straight face.” By that point, however, she is far too drunk to mind.

Brand-Shei is about to start another round—something about a... wamasu?—but the bartender declares their little contest over. “It’s two hours past closing,” she says. “Buy a room or get the hell out.” So, after Derkeethus is elected the winner by popular vote (for they say Brand-Shei is too mundane and Mahariel, too fantastic) and Brand-Shei leaves for his own bed, she puts some coin on the counter and they’re ushered upstairs to a room.

“It’s nice to see you back in a good mood,” Derk tells her, once they’ve landed on the little straw mattress, heaped together haphazardly and too exhausted to care.

“We should help him out,” she says, thinking of Brand-Shei’s story.

Derkeethus catches on immediately (and seems willing to overlook her inelegant shift in conversation). “And how do you expect to do that? He said he hasn’t heard a word about that ship and look at the time he’s put in.”

She turns over onto her belly, accidentally hitting him across the head with her arm; it does more harm to her, what with those horns or spikes or... whatever they are. “ _I_ happen to be an expert at finding things,” she says, as though she’s announcing her arrival alongside her list of titles (which she considers throwing into the conversation as recompense for that bandit story earlier; her titles are quite numerous and impressive when she isn’t sulking about her unwanted notoriety).

“You mean an expert at stealing things,” he says, wrapping his arms around the only pillow. _From damsel-rescuing hero to pillow thief in one night,_ she thinks. _Typical of a man._

“They aren’t mutually exclusive.” She bunches up one of the spare blankets and props her head on it. At least it’s softer than the ground. Warmer, too.

For a few minutes, they’re both quiet, dozing in and out of shallow, drink-induced sleep, but then he stirs. “I know some people who work the docks in Windhelm,” he says. “I could send a letter, see if they know anything.”

She hums approval, far too lost in almost-slumber to put forth the effort of coherent speech, and then she falls asleep, more content than she’s been since she woke up on that cart.

...

The morning is—as mornings generally are—bright. It seems this place has little pity where hangovers are concerned. _Talen and his “special” drinks._ It is also busy. She hardly has time to think through their next move before she’s got a shem walking up to her like every conman she’s ever known. _Great._

But she has to admit, she likes the idea. And it doesn’t seem that Flemeth plans on making an appearance any time soon, so it certainly seems like a good option for the interim.

“I don’t like it,” Derk says. And of course he doesn’t. But they’ve got to do _something_ unless he’s looking forward to being tossed out of the city gates or sleeping with the other poor beggars. _Or he could go back home,_ she thinks, but of course he won’t. _Stubborn._

Mahariel rubs her temple with her thumb. The promised reward isn’t the problem; the problem is the manner by which this man is insisting she attain it. “I don’t think you get what I’m saying here, shem,” she says, looking the man right in his eyes. “I don’t steal from people I like.”

“I hardly think one night of drinking qualifies him for life-long friendship, lass,” the man says. His name, he’d told her, is Brynjolf. But she doesn’t care for his name, not until he’s given her a reason to waste her breath saying it. So far, he has not, despite his lucrative offer of membership. “Besides, the consequential jail time will be minimal, a few days. Then he’ll be out and back at work, none the wiser of your part in all this.”

“I don’t like it,” Derk repeats, sparing a glance at Brand-Shei by his stall.

“You said I impressed you with the guard,” she counters. “Isn’t that evidence enough that I know my way around thieving?”

“Evidence enough that you know a thief when you see one,” Brynjolf says. “ _Not_ that you’ve got the skill yourself.”

She crosses her arms. She does not like ultimatums and she does not like being told what to do. That’s not simply the Commander in her, nor even solely the Dalish—it’s a part of _her,_ of Mahariel. A part that poor Master Ilen was never quite able to beat out of her.

“Alright, fine,” she says, not bothering to hide her annoyance.

“You can’t be serious.” Derkeethus is, unsurprisingly, displeased. She can even see the scales along the back of his neck begin to lift, just a bit, in irritation. _Like the fur on a cat,_ she thinks, laughing to herself and wondering if he’d be offended, were she to make the observation aloud.

“You heard the shem, D,” she says, eyes still firmly on Brynjolf. “He wants to see what I can do.”

Perhaps Derkeethus has picked up on the tones of her voice in much the same way she’s picked up on the subtle movements of some of his scales. Perhaps he trusts that she has some trick up her sleeves and a bit of good will left in her hardened heart. Or perhaps, his growing loyalty to her ( _like so many before him,_ she thinks bitterly) has outweighed his own morality. Whatever it is, he watches her—just for a second—out of the corner of his eye before he nods curtly at her decision.

...

With Riften’s little market in full bustle, the distraction isn’t a problem.

Derk stands at the front of the crowd, an eye on the guards circling the area and a frown still very visible on his face. Brynjolf’s stall is directly across from Brand-Shei’s and though he stands on his platform, a bit above the gathering crowd, he will not be able to see her as she slips her hands in her new friend’s pockets. Despite this obvious fact, Brynjolf lets his eyes wander among the faces of his audience, allowing them to rest every few seconds on the wooden stall she is surely hidden behind so she may do the deed.

Were that the deed she was doing, at least.

He is apparently very confident in her ability (and her willingness) to do as she was instructed. And it is because of this confidence that she is able to sneak behind him and pluck a disappointingly light coin purse from his belt. _Twenty coins,_ she thinks, turning her nose up at it. _Twenty blighted coins._

She peeks around Brynjolf’s waist and nods to Derkeethus, who signals to Brynjolf that he may end his “promotional demonstration,” as he’d called it, and then the crowd disperses.

“Excellent lass,” Brynjolf says. But when the guards come, no stolen ring is found on Brand-Shei or his cart. The ring is, in fact, right where it is supposed to be: tucked safely in the jeweller’s lockbox. Brynjolf’s grin goes slack. “What happened? I thought you did your job.”

“I did _a_ job,” she says, pulling his purse from her pocket and dangling it before him. “Evidence of my skill.”

He turns to pat at his belt. When he faces her again (and yanks his purse away), she’s sure he’s either going to award her a beer or a knife in her back.

Derkeethus stands beside her, his hands clasped behind him and wearing an expression unreadable to those with untrained eyes. She, however, sees the faintest curve of a grin.

Brynjolf regards her a moment and perhaps she’d be frightened, were she anyone else, had she never faced the horrors of a Blight or the violent injustices wrought upon her people. He seems a fearsome one, among his ilk. As it is, though, she’s only curious (and, frankly, still a bit annoyed at being bossed around). “Very cute, lass,” he finally says. “But don’t _ever_ do it again.” Then he puts his hand forward for a very discreet shake, well hidden behind the walls of his stall.

...

It only takes a few weeks for Mahariel to become one of the most well-liked thieves in the city. “You’ve got style, at least,” they seem fond of saying of her. In fact, within the city walls, she rarely has to resort to sneaking anything from anyone (although she can’t deny that she does enjoy doing it sometimes anyway, particularly from the Jarl’s Manor).

Mercer, Brynolf, and the like (whom she flat-out refuses to call her superiors) are pleased enough with her influence but less so with her methods.

“The point of all this isn’t some cruddy protection money,” Mercer says, cheeks puffed out and forehead wrinkled in frustration. “The _point_ is to make people fear us—to make them respect our reputation.”

“You want respect? We’re a guild of thieves,” she says, rolling her eyes and gesturing to the entirety of their little hideaway in the sewer. She really needn’t push her luck with him quite so hard but, damn, if she’s got to have a shem bossing her around, she ought to take her little victories where she can. “They aren’t going to _respect_ you no matter what we do. May as well generate some goodwill; not like it’s costing you anything.”

“We don’t operate on the goodwill of peasants,” he says, a bit of spit landing on her face. Lovely. “We operate on the goodwill of Maven Blackbriar and you’re _pissing her off_!”

Derk looks up from his seat across the room when Mercer’s voice echoes off the walls. She shakes her head— _no need to worry—_ and he goes back to pretending he’s not sitting in a sewer waiting for her to finish up shady business deals.

“Maven really ought to consider just how much everyone hates her,” she mutters. And gods, does she _ever_ hate Maven. Mahariel is no one’s errand girl, particularly not Maven Blackbriar’s.

“All I’m doing,” she says, returning to a normal volume. “Is what you ask me to do. I don’t see that how I get the job done matters.”

“I asked you to get our money—” he starts.

“I did.”

“ _Not_ to cut deals with people,” he finishes, teeth audibly grinding. “What’s this I hear about you doing favours for those lizards in the bar?”

“Argonians,” she corrects. “And anyway, it worked out. He needed something, I needed something, we both get what we want and I don’t have to piss off the only topside bartender who likes me.”

“You didn’t think precious gems would be of more use _here_?”

“Yes, well, you didn’t ask me for a wagonload of amethysts, did you? No. You asked me for protection money and I’ve ensured it. Besides,” she says, a little grin on her face. “I think it’s sweet that he’s making their wedding rings.” The realization of what she’s just said is enough to make her want to crawl into a hole; gods, if Alistair had heard her say such a thing. Or Nathaniel, _ugh._

“Romantic notions?” Mercer sounds absolutely nauseated. “You fucked us over for a sappy story?”

“It’s not like I stole from the godsdammed _vault,_ Mercer. For fuck’s sake you—”

She catches sight of Brynjolf walking towards them and her shoulders visibly relax. Finally someone who won’t nag at her (not as much, anyway). “Brynjolf,” she calls, waving him over. “ _Please_ tell Mercer to lay off me—”

“Actually,” he starts, clearly uncomfortable. “I’ve just come over from Bersi’s shop...”

_Oh, Dread Wolf drag me to the fucking void._

Mercer just crosses his arms and taps his foot. “And?”

“Well,” Brynjolf begins. “He didn’t give me quite so much trouble as he usually does.”

Mercer narrows his eyes at her. “And why’s that, I wonder?”

 _Only him,_ she thinks. _Only fucking Mercer Frey would be displeased that things are going better._ Had she ever been such a micro-managing pain in the ass when she was in charge of the Vigil? Gods. She holds out her hands. “How do you expect him to pay protection money he doesn’t have? You want me to go in and smash things? That’s not going to turn a profit for any of us.”

“And so you did _what_ exactly instead?”

She’s silent. No point in making this worse and she’s found that honesty generally does just that. But he’s clearly not going to get frustrated and just walk off, throwing his hands up in exasperation like he has every time before. She was counting on that.

“Fine,” she says, propping her fists on her hips. “We’ve an arrangement: when I find some old, dusty dwarven _thing_ out in the Hold, I bring it to him. He makes a decent profit, pays your protection money, and I get a discount. Everybody’s happy.”

Mercer and Brynjolf only stare at her.

“It’s a good idea,” she argues. “He hasn’t given us any trouble since I started.”

“You are not here to make _friends_ ,” Mercer says, jabbing his pointer finger into her face. When’s the last time someone had the audacity to do that to her? Disgraced, disowned, and discharged she may be but she killed a fucking archdemon. She ended a war. She commanded armies. There’s not a fucking shem alive stupid enough to knowingly put his finger in her face. Except for Mercer, apparently. Gods, she hates this place. “Remember that when you get to Whiterun,” he continues. “You’ve got a goddamn job to do.”

He turns around and stalks off, still yelling at her as he walks away. “And get that damned lizard of yours out of here! I’ve told you a hundred times not to bring him down here!”

_Asshole._

...

“Have I told you how much I hate going down into the Cistern?” Derk teases.

“Yes,” she says, rolling her eyes. “Yes, you have.”

It’s nice to be outside the city, out in the wilds again. She must admit that she, too, prefers the fresh air and sky much more than the clammy air of the Cistern, more than anything Riften has to offer within its gates. The wilderness here—it’s not like home, not quite, but it’s something. She knows wild lands; she knows camping and hunting and survival. The weather might be different, the smells, but the basics are mostly the same. And she must admit: the trees here are beautiful.

“Have I told you _today_ how much I hate it?”

“Yes, D,” she says again, smiling this time.

She’s not overly fond of this little guild either, truth be told. She much prefers working on her own. But it’s a living. It’s steady work and friends in the guard. It’s warm food and clean water and decent beds at the Bee and Barb, now that she’s done Talen a few favours.

“Well, I do,” Derk says, giving her a little shove. “I hate it. Just so we’re completely clear.”

 _Thanks for going down there with me,_ she wants to tell him. _Thanks for putting up with Mercer’s shit because you worry for me,_ she wants to say. _Thanks for hanging out with me at the stupid bar in that stupid city in this stupid place._

But she doesn’t say any of that. Hell, it’s been a decade and she can hardly even force honesty from her lips for Nathaniel. But it seems Derk’s got just enough in common with all those she left behind in Thedas because among his other habits—namely teasing, prodding, and poking at her—he’s also pretty damn good at knowing exactly what she’s thinking. And sometimes he’s even got the decency not to announce it.

Now’s not one of those times, though.

“Don’t worry,” he says, smug as you bloody please. “I know you’re glad I stayed around. It’d be so dull in the sewers without me.”

“I was a thief long before I met _you,_ ” she says, dragging her hand over a road sign to wipe away the dirt. Windhelm, that way. Whiterun, the other way. Solitude, even farther the other way. “I’d manage.”

“We’re not far off from Darkwater, you know.” Not subtle at all, Derkeethus.

She knows. They could make it to Darkwater in half an hour, easy. They’re so close...

“And it’s been a while.”

She knows. It’s just over a month they’ve been in Riften, or wandering the right outside the city. She feels like she’s been wasting her time, like every night she slept in that inn, her family back home was waiting up for her. And what’s she done? Dig up some “dwarven” artefacts that didn’t seem dwarven at all. Steal some pretty baubles from the Jarl’s bedroom.

“And I’m sure they miss us.”

She knows. She misses them too and she’s not ashamed to admit it. At least she’s got that much honesty in her.

She’s about to tell him he’s probably right. Even Tormir’s temper has likely cooled and considering how much Mahariel’s lost, she really ought to have learned by now that her pride can be ignored for the sake of—

But then she hears something off to their left, the kind of twigs-snapping-underfoot that means someone is trying to be sneaky.

She’s getting rusty. She should’ve known someone was there long before now. Should’ve known they were being followed. Oh, Zevran would be so embarrassed.

“Hey,” she says, elbowing his arm and tipping her head slightly to her left. “Have I ever told you about Fen’Harel?”

Derk nods. “No,” he says, hand already on the hilt of his blade. “What about him?”

Another shuffling sound, behind them this time.

“They say he had a brother. Maybe lots of brothers,” she says, reaching over her shoulder to scratch behind her ear. She lets her hand rest there, fiddling with a lock of her hair inches away from the fletching of an arrow. “They say that one night, his sister snuck up behind him and—”

She whips the arrow out of her quiver and knocks it, takes a shot into the woods behind them. It’s an estimate, really, and a rushed one, but it connects to something and someone curses. Loudly. Not a kill shot, but pretty damn decent all things considered.

“Left,” she says to him quickly, before she pulls her knife from her hip and charges forward, toward whoever she’s injured.

The arrow’s lodged between the plates of his armour along his hip. Not the heaviest she’s seen, but heavy enough. Well tended. Moderately expensive.

_Large. Block. Great sword. Dodge—shit. Dodge. Favours the right side. No shield. Feint right, then left and low._

 She and Derk haven’t done anything all that risky, certainly nothing comparable to her usual misadventures. She’s kept them within sight of Riften’s walls at all times, places with good visibility, stupid targets, and easy escape routes. Without the Blight, without the taint coursing through her body, she can’t feel her enemies. And she can’t feel her allies.

_Left and low. Wait for his swing to shift his momentum. Wait. Wait. Aim for the ribs._

And she’s trying her hardest to focus on the asshole in front of her and not the sounds of Derk fighting behind her. When it’s Alistair, or Nathaniel, or Sigrun—she knows what they’re doing because she’s had ten years to learn it. When it’s them, she knows where they are because they’re connected by their blood. She knows when they’re too far away or when they’re hurt. She knows when they need back up and when they can handle it themselves.

When the lout in front of her is finally down—and she finishes him off quickly, unwilling to chance the determination of the dying—she picks up her discarded bow and rubs the sweat off her forehead. When she turns around, it’s to see that Derk’s own foe was felled just as easily.

She’s just not used to fighting alone. Even if she isn’t technically alone. She’s not used to that either.

It’s not the same.

She was Dalish. Then she was a Warden. Now she’s just... she’s just...

Derk leans down over the fallen and starts rummaging through the man’s bag.

“I specifically remember you giving me shit about looting,” she says, making her way back to his side.

“I’m not looting.”

She just rolls her eyes and takes his sword, wipes it clean with some clothe ripped from their attacker’s shirt before sliding it back into the sheath at his hip.

_Looks an awful lot like looting to me—_

“Mahariel, look at this.” He passes her a roll of paper, clearly a missive, but...

She shoves it back into his hands and looks at the ground, clenches her fists at her sides. “I can’t read it,” she says.

His mouth opens a bit—maybe in surprise, maybe in an attempt to comment. Either way, she cuts him off.

“I know how to read,” she says firmly, eyes back to his now. She’s angry. She’s frustrated. But she refuses to be ashamed of this. “I do. Leliana taught me to read. But this isn’t—the words aren’t... It’s not the same. But I _can_ read. I can write.”

“I didn’t say any—”

“Just tell me what the damned thing says.” She exhales. Why’s she always do shit like that? “Please,” she adds.

He chuckles and straightens out the page then clears his throat. “Seems you are a wanted criminal.”

She shrugs. “That’s not new.” In fact she couldn’t be less surprised. Once a fugitive, always a fugitive, it seems. Ah, well.

“Oh, wait. It gets better. The Jarl wants—”

And then there’s a glint of light by his head, the sound of swinging metal, a crunch, a yelp. There’s a sword in D’s shoulder and she’d not even seen it coming.

...

Trouble comes in threes.

Part of her wants to blame this place—she’s different, it’s different, things don’t look or smell or work the way they’re supposed to. But she’s got her dragon-man slung over her shoulders like the carcass of a hunter’s trophy and she can’t find it in her to blame anything but herself.

She’s rusty. She should’ve known. Should’ve seen. Should’ve heard. She’s not used to this.

“Gotta be some kind of payback,” Derk mutters. If his face weren’t so close to her ear, she wouldn’t even be able to hear him. “I carried you back to camp just like this, that day.”

She wants to tell him to shut up. He’s heavy and they’re so close to Darkwater and he just needs to shut up and hold on and stop making jokes.

But she’s scared he will.

“Not even close,” she says, not even attempting to cover her worry with false laughter. “You’re way heavier than me.”

That last guy had gone down easy enough. That had made her angrier than anything else: the idiot wasn’t even clever, just lucky. Just got in a good hit because she wasn’t paying attention. _Fucking bounty hunting ass—_

And then she hears it: the twang of metal and rock, the sound that led her to Darkwater. The sound that means Derk’s almost home, that he’s going to be fine, that Annekke or Tormir can fix her fuck up.

He yelps when she starts running. Of course he does; it hurts. But she’s got to get him there _now._ She’s yelling for them—any of them, all of them—before the house even comes into view and by the time it does, there they are, faces shifting through every emotion she can think of and all of them landing on panic.

 _Thank you, thank you, thank you._ She’s got no idea who she’s thanking, just that all she’s got in her is gratefulness as Sondas carefully takes Derk into his arms and carts him into the house.

...

“Is he going to be ok?”

She’s sitting at the foot of Annekke and Verner’s bed, watching his chest rise and fall far too slowly. He tries to sit up, to at least prop himself up on his elbows, but it doesn’t go well and his resulting _ow’s_ send her into a fretting frenzy.

“I’m fine,” he says. And she completely ignores him, looking instead to Tormir who nods, assuring her ( _again_ ) that yes, he will be fine.

“Just going to take some time to heal up,” Tormir says, patting Mahariel on the arm.

Sondas straightens his back from leaning against the door frame and the movement makes her jump. She’d forgotten he was there. Forgotten, really, than anything outside this tiny little bubble even existed. “What happened?”

“I fucked up,” she admits. “Some asshole behind us and I didn’t even see him.”

“Oh, don’t start that shit,” Derkeethus says from the bed and, to her surprise, he sounds genuinely angry. “It just happened. Don’t do that.”

“It didn’t _just_ happen,” she fights back. “They were sent after _me._ That guy was right in front of me and I didn’t—”

“Everything isn’t about you,” he says, his usual cheer back in place. Gods, she wants to slap him right across the face! How can he— Why do they always do this? Why do they always let her off when she makes a mistake?

Tamlen. Zathrian. Avernus. Amaranthine. The Architect. The Wardens.

And they _always_ let her off so easy, like nothing’s her fault, like it could happen to anyone.

“That’s bullshit,” she says.

She’s not fucking doing this anymore. She’s not doing it. She’s tired of it.

She turns on her heel and walks right past Sondas, doesn’t stop when he calls her name, or when Hrefna tries to catch up with her. She doesn’t stop when Annekke pulls her back by her wrist or when she can no longer hear the sounds of the forge. She doesn’t stop until the smell of the smelter is long behind her and she can’t hear Derk yelling anymore, even in her head.

“Mahariel,” he’d called out. “Don’t do this again!”

She doesn’t have to do anything here.


	8. Interim III: Marcurio's First Mistake

The first time she comes into the Bee and Barb, she doesn’t even see him. But he certainly sees her.

Marcurio’s become a bit of a permanent fixture here, spending his nights in an upper room and his days pestering travellers to purchase his services—bodyguard, guide, handsome decoration, whatever suits them. But business has been slow for quite a while now; that one-wagon merchant caravan from Riften to Solitude and back paid well enough and took up a couple of months but aside from that, this year’s been quite bare as far as work is concerned.

Of course, when that dunmer woman first comes to Riften (her Argonian securely in tow), he immediately recognizes her as the most interesting event from the aforementioned caravan job. It’s not every day that an admittedly pretty—although clearly cracked—woman climbs into his bed in the middle of the night ( _perhaps only once a month,_ he decides on with a shrug). Despite that, when she doesn’t notice him, he doesn’t approach her; she was quite bizarre, after all (though he never did believe the Argonian’s story and seeing them here now, behaving normally, just validates his suspicions). Once the drinks start flowing, he makes a point of staying on his little bench against the wall opposite the bar: appropriately inconspicuous but still giving him a great view of the ensuing chaos that the other patrons drunkenly label a bullshitting contest.

She’d be impressive if her tales had a bit more subtlety. But as it is, it’s like she’s not even trying to be believable. She could learn a thing or two from her scaled friend: lean heavy on the romantic aspects and you always catch an audience.

She seems to catch an audience anyway. She and the Argonian frequent the place, becoming a bit of a permanent fixture themselves, and many of the regulars come to know them by name. Most of Riften comes to know her name, actually: she’s a blasted thief and does little to hide the fact, though she’s not actually been caught in the act even once. _Mahariel,_ they say. _Most Generous of the Thieves Guild._ Bit ridiculous, if you ask him. Not that he’s got any grievance with them, of course. Not that he’s at all peeved that they’ve neither of them noticed him sitting here _every single day._ Not at all. Not a _bit._

He passes Talen a few coins to pay off his weekly tab and falls into a seat at the bar. “So where’s your favourite customer got off to now?”

Talen laughs and rests his elbow on the bar, leaning forward. “Oh, don’t be like that, Marcurio. You know _you’re_ my favourite.”

“Stop.”

“Don’t worry; I’ll be a married man soon enough and I can put you behind me,” Talen says with another chuckle, returning to his actual job of cleaning up.

“I’m not going to comment on that,” Marcurio throws back. “But you didn’t actually answer my question.”

“How should I know where they’ve gone? I’m not their father, you know.”

True enough, but he’s sure Talen has some idea. She rarely goes off without announcing her intentions first. ( _“Hey Talen, D and I are going to head toward that creepy ruin west of town. Save me a drink.” “Keerava, you beautiful creature, if I bring you some honey from a certain bee farm, would you bake me some of that sweet bread you make?” “Alright everyone, as much fun as I’m having drinking with you, I have a bandit hideout to ransack. See you in three days.”_ ) He’s honestly not sure if it’s charming or annoying, but what’s annoying him right now is that he’d swear he heard some concerning whispers the other day—the sort of whispers one hears when Maven Blackbriar is involved and any fool could figure out that Maven’s less than pleased with the dunmer’s growing reputation.

He’d considered following behind them—at least far enough away from the city to mention his suspicions—but they’d left earlier than he’d expected and, truth be told, he probably wouldn’t have followed through with it anyway. _Heroic Intervention_ is not his modus operandi.

One might think, then, that it’s not the whispers that are bothering him. One might think that it’s his stubbornness or cowardice or selfishness or some other unflattering trait. Luckily, Marcurio is very good at ignoring what “one” might think, even—especially—if he is the one thinking it.

Talen offers him another drink but Marcurio waves him off and silently climbs the stairs to his room. He’s suddenly feeling rather tired.

...

The days that follow are quiet and the whispers he’d heard (and others too, apparently) cease, which is possibly a good thing but more likely a bad thing.

A few of the Bee and Barb’s regulars make a point of asking—as quietly as possible—where the Dunmer and Argonian Duo have gone but neither Talen nor Keerava have any answers (and it becomes clear that their own worry is growing as much as everyone else’s).

It seems the strange pair has cultivated quite the fan club—every argonian and mer in the city save the steward and the brewmaster, and even a few of the Nords, of all things, come in to check for updates. It is unexpected, though with every concerned face that walks through the door, Marcurio thinks more and more that he shouldn’t be surprised at all.

Four such days pass and his stomach begins churning in— _Guilt? Surely not._ He very nearly snorts. The welfare of two strangers—particularly two strangers who endangered his last job by stealing soul gems from his employer’s cart—is not his responsibility. And anyway, he’s not the only person who _might’ve_ heard what _may_ have been _rumours_ of... It’s not as though anyone _else_ has run off into the wilderness to check up on them.

The door opens—for what must be the hundredth time today; he is growing extremely bothered by the sound of it—and it’s solely the sound of Talen’s bellowing laughter that makes Marcurio look up.

“Where have you been?”

“Oh, you know,” comes the reply, Mahariel’s voice familiar but clearly lacking its usual cheer. “Wandering around and making a mess.”

Marcurio’s stomach unknots in relief (and gods, does that ever irritate him). Talen offers her a mug but she declines with a quick shake of her head.

“What about Derkeethus?” Talen says. “Where’s he got off to?”

Marcurio notes her flinch even from his seat across the room, but she recovers quickly. “Went home for a while,” she says. “You know how he gets about my job.”

“Can’t say I blame him for not wanting to get thrown in jail,” Talen says.

“As if I’ve ever been caught.” And there’s the usual glibness. So perhaps things aren’t quite so bad as Marcurio had imagined. “Actually,” she continues, sliding onto a bar stool and propping her elbows onto the counter. “I was wondering if you had any advice for me. I was thinking of trying to talk Tythis into doing a few jobs with me while D is—while he’s on vacation.”

_Is that so?_ Marcurio silently rises from his little bench, though whether he’s completely certain of his motivations is questionable, even to himself.

“No way you’ll convince that blustery fool to step outside the city,” Talen tells her and Marcurio leans an elbow onto the bar.

“I’m afraid our friend here is correct: Tythis is a waste of your time and, truth be told, completely unreliable.” Marcurio’s voice comes out far smoother than he’d expected it would, considering the stress of the last few days, but he’s made such propositions often enough; his voice is well practiced. (And looks can only get one so far, after all, although that does typically put him at an advantage.)

She doesn’t turn fully toward him, instead eyeing him from the side before flicking her gaze back to Talen for an appraisal. It seems she really doesn’t remember him. _Nope. Not irked at all. Not in the slightest. Completely unaffected._

Talen nods. “That’ll be Marcurio. Shit company, but he keeps a contract and it couldn’t hurt to have some of his flashy tricks on hand.”

_Flashy._ He’s almost offended. It’s true, of course, but Talen needn’t use that tone.

With that glowing recommendation, she faces him. “I’m going to Whiterun. I’m a thief. I’m a liar. I’m probably going to drag you into all manner of fights and there’s a decent chance of death and dismemberment if you don’t know what you’re doing. Still want the job?”

He’s interested, yes, but no one’s ever called him charitable. And one must maintain professionalism, of course. “If you plan on paying up front.”

She unloops her heavy purse from her belt and drops it onto the counter in front of him with a devilish grin. Something about that—her demeanour seems so much different than what she’s previously displayed—it makes the concern he’d felt over the last few days melt away. Now it’s an odd sense of dread that’s curling in the pit of his stomach.

“Name’s Mahariel,” she says, sliding the pouch of coins toward him. “We’ll leave in an hour.”

He may have just made a mistake.


End file.
